Fever

That winter — so long,
I lost myself in fever,
as shadows of swaying trees came to me.

The dilapidated house, the broken love,

the mud-heart, crumbling
into a burning sickness.

In the corner of the bedroom,
a red-haired Melusine in my illusion,

stitched the scraps of my heart whole.

“You shouldn’t have liked that brown hair.
You and she were never meant to belong
to the same world.”

I said, “I was just a little salt in the soup,
longing to melt into it.”
She led me to the bath.

My fevered fatigue dissolved.
The water in the tub
poured out like a holy grail.

“You must not lose your essence
just for the beauty of brown,
like water overflowing from the bathtub.

A relationship must flow.

All this magic

and alchemy cannot change.”

I went back to bed.
My fingers brushed the windowsill,

while Melusine faded into the outside world,

vanishing at the edge of my darkness.

I lay still, listening

to the slow hush of water in the tub.

That winter,
I had some fever, but I saw Melusine,
but the water flowed toward early spring.

Yucheng Tao is a Chinese international student based in Los Angeles, where he studies songwriting. His work and has appeared in Wild Court(UK),The Lake(UK),Red Ogre Review (UK)