Falling Out
We play our parts too well
as lines in a barcode of light
on the sand. I wonder
what we are worth:
a lock of donated hair,
our cat curled in the baby’s crib.
My outstretched arm forms an obelisk
trying to poison the sun.
You empty your pockets of
drugstore receipts, pineapple Hi-Chews,
bits of my mind. The seashells
gleam away in disgust. The tide recedes
and you cite bad timing. It’s always bad timing.
While you were falling through glass doors,
I wrote poetry on unrolled joints.
You touched the wrong finger
next to the river, cheeks crusted
with last night’s salt. Each apology
turned to foam, slicked wry on your lips,
the wavering bank. I worry every day
that I’m already dead. I remember
there is nothing brighter
than a reflection, which is why
two mirrors make a bomb. I finger
the creases on my palm as if
the tape can screech back—
a bride unlaces her corset with scissors—
smoke shrinks into the walls—
a bruise lifts—
hovers—
I look you in the eye—
feel my feet start to burn—
I Have Loved You
As our steps align, I think
this rhythm could have once
snapped a bridge. The roadside
grass yields for our feet and stays,
blades turned so we cannot tell
if they are bent or uprooted.
A six-foot tarp across the street
makes a mountain of a body.
Passersby try not to notice.
A CVS worker is scrubbing peroxide
on the sidewalk with the focus
of a grave digger. Here, I imagine
the stars as bullet holes healed the wrong way.
I have imagined palming your face,
pointer finger digging into your temple
like a kid in a sandbox digging for gold.
Nothing appears on the news—
I have been checking for years.
What’s left composes and composes,
unbearably distinct against the horizon.
We’re standing where the compass points
when the magnet pulls directly below:
everywhere and nowhere, heart spinning
in the throat. We’re standing
just beyond the curve of the first path
and I’m talking about summer, desperate,
watching memory bob to your eyes
like a bloated lotus, the edge
of your coat fluttering like a tarp.
Blank smoke lies against your skin,
neither absorbed nor reflected, the way
a hand doesn’t touch a heart
but the skin around it.
All this to say: I have searched
your spine for evidence of breath
only to find the present tense
curled like a stone,
rising and dying, rising and dying
***
Author photograph courtesy of Ava Chen
