Rabbit Girl Leaps Up

by lae astra

“I wanted to write a poem that moves like an abstract painting, blurring between dream and reality.”

I wanted to write a poem that moves like an abstract painting, blurring between dream and reality. A while back, I spent some time living outside the city and close to a river. For a few months, in the midst of transitioning from one chapter of my life to another, I woke up while it was still dark and walked along the river to greet the colors of sunrise as they slipped over the nearby mountaintops. In that hazy early morning fog of gold and fresh, glittering dew, I felt both a strong sense of clarity and as though I were moving through layers of dreams, as I stepped forward. Even then, lost as I was, the music and colors of the city continued pulling me back — not just because I had to commute there for work, but because of the future possibilities it contained, humming and twinkling, on the other sides of doors if I dared open them. When we take the leap, sometimes it turns out that we open doors not only to other places and people, but to our waiting selves.

& dissolves into moonbeams.
Crickets tune grass strings
to the stream’s slow tumble
of dreams bubbled higher
with each twitch of her petal-
soft nose. One bubble glows
cerulean, lavender, sakura pink.
Unfolds a prismatic gateway
into another universe where
she molts her fursuit & bounds
out into the electric city flow
as an almost but not quite
human girl. Ears hidden under
black hoodie scarved in aurora.
Low bass hum & fuzzy green
clover scent spills from the door
of an art gallery. She is pulled
inside by a painting on the wall
that shows a girl brushing violets
along the curve of another
girl’s ears. Both neither rabbit
nor human, just somewhere
in the infinite meadow of it all.
Wishing she could embrace
the artist, she gazes & gazes
until her vision glitches crystalline.
A kindling of rainbow within
quartz faces. A glimpse of some
familiar silhouette-
and the gateway folds her back
through bubbled tunnel to where
crickets sing again by the stream
holding slivered moonbeams.
She lands on her feet in the grass
& sighs. Another fleeting jump.
Then, a tender floral wind kisses
her nose. Breathing in deep,
she steps through sweet clover
& follows it to a single paintbrush
nestled into a patch of violets
in full, luminous bloom.

“Rabbit Girl Leaps Up” was written in August 2023 and was originally published in DOG TEETH.

lae astra believes in total liberation. An agender trans artist and writer, they were born in Guilin, grew up in Mississippi, Alabama, California, and then made Tokyo their home. They like farmers markets, invertebrates, birds, experimental electronic music, and a free Palestine. They believe in tomorrow. Find them at laeastra.com/links.

SLOW ORBIT
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