Compulsion Has No Opposite

The drawer has a false bottom

The bedrock is a skin of greasy ice

Morning light scours raw pink

The difference is I’ll solve it this time

My eyes were wrong

My ears were wrong

My terror aimed backward

In this new year I know to seek

What’s real with sculpted sense

Hello flesh, ideogram, foothold

Trap I’m bound to spring

If X then Y and if I then Thou

Decant me via the nostrils

Swirl fingers thru blank milkblood

For a thing that retains its shape

Despite my touch and it’s this

Promise of a final thud

A floor to rest on

I’ll rest when I wake up

Lucy Xiang-fu Wainger is a poet from New York City. She is author of the chapbooks How to Write an Essay (Red Mare, 2026) and In Life There Are Many Things (Black Lawrence, 2023). She currently lives in Chicago and teaches middle school ELA.