"Golden Age" by Hailey Stumpo
Ruowei Lim | Parable of the Rabbit at the End of the World
After a lifetime of being single and undesired,
rabbit was ready to leave this world
in her final form: when the lunar new year
comes to pass, she will transform into
a dragon and flee this mortal coil. To be born
in the liminal space between
this year and the next, at the beginning
and the end, is an exercise in
ambivalence—a fate worse than death.
Better to reincarnate
as the ink-soft shadows of dusk,
cutting across red brick
like the cheek of a lover. So little
lasts. You remember
grasping this once in childhood. Like
all small things in the world, you were
unconcerned with tomorrow.
When the light slips from the buildings,
it lingers on your doorstep, like all
ordinary things waiting to be loved. But when
it leaves, it leaves all at once, taking
your desire with it. Rabbit knows
to be tied to the earth is to be doomed, fearing
one’s finite leaps and hiding places. In the air,
there are no borders, no checkpoints on the
imagination. Except to be
transitory, like the caress of a ray’s palm
on cement, a brief romance. We search
for ways to stay. Better to linger
on the doorstep, the riverbank where
greatness is forgotten. The way the light forgets
the touch of every façade. The way the shadows
gather tenderly, hide your boundaries and
your limits. Rabbit is ready to untether
herself from the earth, reincarnate
as rain, sunset, joy, everything ephemeral.
At the end of desire is a door
back to the beginning.
rabbit was ready to leave this world
in her final form: when the lunar new year
comes to pass, she will transform into
a dragon and flee this mortal coil. To be born
in the liminal space between
this year and the next, at the beginning
and the end, is an exercise in
ambivalence—a fate worse than death.
Better to reincarnate
as the ink-soft shadows of dusk,
cutting across red brick
like the cheek of a lover. So little
lasts. You remember
grasping this once in childhood. Like
all small things in the world, you were
unconcerned with tomorrow.
When the light slips from the buildings,
it lingers on your doorstep, like all
ordinary things waiting to be loved. But when
it leaves, it leaves all at once, taking
your desire with it. Rabbit knows
to be tied to the earth is to be doomed, fearing
one’s finite leaps and hiding places. In the air,
there are no borders, no checkpoints on the
imagination. Except to be
transitory, like the caress of a ray’s palm
on cement, a brief romance. We search
for ways to stay. Better to linger
on the doorstep, the riverbank where
greatness is forgotten. The way the light forgets
the touch of every façade. The way the shadows
gather tenderly, hide your boundaries and
your limits. Rabbit is ready to untether
herself from the earth, reincarnate
as rain, sunset, joy, everything ephemeral.
At the end of desire is a door
back to the beginning.
Ruowei Lim (they/she) is a writer-in-progress with roots in Shanghai and Singapore. They are a featured reader in Sundress Publications' 2026 Poets in Pajamas series, an Abode Press Virtual Summer Retreat Poetry Fellow, and a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Poetry Participant. Find out more about her work at dialecticofhope.wordpress.com.
Hailey Stumpo is a Dover-based fine artist currently pursuing a degree in studio art at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Her works have been acquired by private collectors in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, including renowned oil painter Dr. Sandra Corpora, by whom Stumpo has been mentored for three years. You can find Hailey on Instagram @indieannaartwork and on her website.
