The Flight
by Henry Wei Leung

Whereas helicopters keep shoveling above us
out of sight; whereas streetposts scan for objects
among persons, longing to see our hair, our masks,
untied; whereas for us the unmasking meant
being faceless again in a small box of a city
where the most exotic myth was home; whereas
to live seven million strong in the box
was to rage at the season’s arrival of typhoon
and tyrant; whereas our towers grow down now,
underground; whereas the slow-motion violence
of our parents’ keeping their heads down
left us nothing but the edge of the sea; whereas
however we sliced it, the waves kept rising;

determining that the next wave always rises;
uncertain you’ll recognise me after all this salt,
sickness, lying in state; recognising there is
no antidote to sovereignty; afraid of state;
afraid of self; determined to lose only one
or the other; and imagining meanwhile
a future for the romantic rats, the savagely
kind roaches, in a world less and less
human, a world lately burning; therefore

I hold: how hollow to be free
in a place not of one’s choosing,
to be soluble, sea-swept,
cloaked by a map where all
roads are removed—like a flag—
I hold myself like a flag.

Henry Wei Leung is the author of Goddess of Democracy (Omnidawn, 2017), one of three finalists for the PEN America Literary Awards in Poetry—Los Angeles. He is a J.D. candidate at Berkeley Law, and was recently selected to join the Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program. At the Program in D.C. next year, he will present a paper on Hong Kong’s sovereignty and self-determination, and the role of mass movements in shaping the course of international law.