you and your big red no-good bloody mouth

Image courtesy of pxhere.

i was so mad i wanted to write a poem about you but i couldn’t write a poem about you because all the poems i write about you keep turning into love poems and i’m tired of being wrung out, caved in, crushed like a fistful of ice, so instead i went to sleep. they say the poet controls the floor but the only thing i control is the first four knuckles of each hand. the last knuckle is yours. it’s fine for me to say that. you won’t do anything with them anyway.

when i woke up my hands were numb and stinging with sharpness. at lunch today i forgot i was supposed to be sad because the room was too cold. it was the least sad thirty-five minutes of my life. i don’t remember how a single moment of it felt. i only know that i didn’t want to write any poems while i cut my tomatoes into pieces and now i do, and the sun is orange, and the moon is gold, and every shard of rain against the window sounds like your name. [you have the sweetest laugh in the recorded history of sound. did you know that? you smile at everything that i say, even the things that don’t mean anything.] i don’t know if you know that but i think you should. i think you should stop. i think love is the cruelest thing you can do to someone who’s never held the other half of the question, who only knows what the first smear of light in the sky looks like, not the miracle that unfurls in its wake. don’t be nice to me. i said don’t be nice to me. don’t graze the side of my arm like i’m not covered in nails.

what do i believe in? i believe in the invisibility of things. how we never have the full picture. i believe all the people in the world deserve to be happy at least once. i wish someone believed in me. i think that would make things easier. i wish i had softer skin.

when your hands are numb you have to shake them until the blood starts flowing, but my hands won’t stop screaming no matter how hard i shake them. i think your laugh has dislocated my wrists. i think every good part of me has been broken at least once. i want you to be the happiest person in the world.

our world’s shaped like a sieve, through which things pass and are lost, and the fact of the matter is this: everything i own is too small to stay. everything. the largest object i own is a button, pearly-gray, the sweater it once belonged to trampled under a car tire and the thread worn so thin, it looks like a strand of hair. the smallest object i own is hope.

the first thing i ever owned was wonder, tied with a red string to the pockmarked sky, but it’s all gone now. i gave it to you, after all. which is fine; i wanted to do that. i just forgot how lonely it is. being so goddamn angry. sitting by myself in the dark.

Liya Chang

Liya used to be a worm.

Previous
Previous

Circle Cube

Next
Next

Laughter Lines