Celeste Perez

The Forecast Made No Mention of Your Peculiarities

Disintegration breeds in bile.
The clever bleed skyward.
A temple is only a temple
Because we call it a heartbeat.

We become singular in breath—
A fraction of something is still
A whole of
Its fractioned self.

Medicate limbs one pulse at a time,
Motion might be the only certainty,
But we are inherently liars.

         That cloud, just below us?
Has gone.
         It is not so lost as you.

Celeste Perez is a senior in the undergraduate English Literature and Creative Writing program at Marylhurst University, where she is the 2016 recipient of the Jackie Mosier Emerging Writer Award. She has been published in M Review and Elohi Gadugi Journal. Recent literary endeavors include collaborating on a children’s book about gnomes with her boyfriend, and translating Spanish poetry with her father.