“Sundays at Seven,” by Wei-Wei Lee
July 29, 2019
Sundays at Seven
Sunday mornings rising.
Not of the faith, never been to church, but
here I am in the biting air
like a street vendor with a cotton candy cart; my breaths
spun-sugar white. They pull up with no announcement, no fanfare—
faces turned, expecting, though.
Here we are; off we go.
No people on the roads. We go fast
under the speed limit.
Music croons, backdrop to bickering laughter born of
the chaos of familiarity, or maybe
the familiarity of chaos.
The streetlights could look like stars.
Caffeine is bought and the table we frequent
is empty and waiting for
its wayward guests.
We are armed with determination and
resignation. We come knowing
there is work to be done.
Unsure. We are too young to be
where we are and our footing
too precarious, too often.
If I am but human amongst
the best of us and the best of us
are tired,
where do we go from there?
The wood grain swirls like currents
pulling us downstream.
Drink from the flood, or let the flood
drown you.
Religion holds no sway on Sundays,
but my silent prayer offered to gods across an ocean
as we file back out to a lighter sky and roads
more lively, though we still don’t slow
on the way home,
surely gives the ones I love
what little blessing I can.
Wei-Wei Lee is seventeen years old and attends Nathan Hale High School. She grew up in Taiwan, but was born in the States, and Seattle is the first city in the States she has ever known and loved. As the 2019/2020 Youth Poet Laureate, she hopes to pay tribute to both Taiwan and America in her writing, and she hopes to do them proud.
Read our recent interview with her here.