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talk to me | things | fourth year | about
prose | poetry | fiction
Hard cider nights
garnished with orange and
a new boy to smile at
I run a hand down his cheek,
trying to find you
my palm feels curtains
he’s shaking
“Where are you?” I ask,
to kiss you again
curled in bed
he tastes like typical America
glasses off until sunrise
I give myself to him thinking it’s enough
but walking through Walmart
it feels weird without you
you’d think it’s a joke or something
I’m really sorry, it really isn’t
There’s an old diner we used to go to in the summer
with cheap specials and photos taped to the wall
we’d sit and he’d bore me with how popular golf is
how he’d have to write ads for those who played–
my coffee would just grow neglected on the table.
I haven’t been for a while, it’s been raining a lot since
so I duck into buildings and it smells like him in the carpets,
the reception desks usually want me to leave
but everything’s so shivered when it storms
and it’s better than hiding under his copy of The Great Gatsby.
Last week in the papers I steal from the university
I read that a cabbie saw his car abandoned near the bridge
days after: his body found drained on a soaked street.
I think it’s him walking the rain behind the dusty glass, I blink
but this shameless city already had thrown out his name.
I was taught how to savor hot drinks in the summer
with masala chai, on the steps of a Hindu temple
in the middle of hill country.
I’m staring at my dusty dashboard
weeks later, low on gas
simmered at a stoplight without AC
as a hazy conversation in the Ford next to me
seeps from their closed windows
to join everything I wanted to ask you
as I drove farther from your house
losing it all in the flecks
of dried raindrops scattered on my windshield
like the strands of your hair
caught between the fibers of my car’s seats;
I reach for a new drink
that tastes more like our fading
syrupy, lining my tongue, sticking to the tar
that’s been closing my throat.
it smells like masking tape inside this empty suitcase
and fresh summer lightning in my car
as dusty as it is
underneath my bed: empty beer bottles, your books
my only dry shoes
worn out nights drunk and crying
near a german couple arguing about financiers
left my friends in a chinese restaurant
and wandered out for a smoke
those blocks reeked of carrots
got back in time for a fortune cookie
which read, “love conquers all”
I’m laughing
it isn’t very funny
I’m walking behind someone with your backpack
dressed in shades like your blue shirt too big.
Remember what you wore when I dragged you drunk
through a neighborhood supermarket just to buy
string cheese and sidewalk chalk?
I stretched thin then keeping an ear scraped
to the ground, the rest of me swimming
in the clouds you’d run away to–
Then I could run to your room and sit next to you
and kiss your thighs and have you roll away
out through the garage like it’s an old friend
and I’d get pricked by the city’s rubber bullets
this city first filled with your phlegm.
The day umbrellas do what they’re supposed to
is when I’ll stop walking through the rain
and stop wanting to say that I love you.
I slept easy around you, with you alone and quiet
without the static of towers masking the sound of breaths
unfiltered in the quiet glow, the heavy eyes of Christmas lights
lulled back on swollen chest–
I drink a lot of hibiscus tea now, to settle my terrible blood
as if the drops that catch my shirt, frayed and falling at the collar,
will catch what’s left of that old warmth
and run it home to the nook between skin and fabric.
