Faces chalk white and bone, we sit behind the casket, the
sorrow in the room enough to cradle our bodies the same way the
marble sky cradles the morning sun—tender with an early kindness,
soft in the way when grief is warranted—but it doesn’t & I feel
spat out like spring rain, bullets pelting from the sky & so it goes, hours later I rush through traffic lanes, to the bus stop, past the old bakery, car windows, thinking about God, body like a fresh wound & I swear I’m not dying
but goddamn, I haven’t even been able to touch the typewriter
three days since, not because I don’t have the sadness, but because
I don’t have the time; I am aware, that in place of every word I write,
a better one exists, a better poet too; I didn’t mean to, I promise,
I didn’t mean to forget about you, kid, I didn’t mean to forget about you either, Father, or to forget the life you handed me—I asked for it, anyway—
knees shot open with a mouth that acts a fool—I didn’t mean to, but
it’s a different kind of love, you & me, and how do we explain this
when you’re rotting in the floorboards, nevermind, I mean in the ground, in the sky, in the wallpaper, the toothbrushes—even the sweet rain wants your perfume and tastes of it now, the gardens out back withering under the drip of your saliva; under every sun dusk sky, I sit under the wisteria and sometimes I think I can move a little without my body hurting too much, without ripping the scabbing sliding over my blood wounds like a garage door, but I still tell myself painful things like: this life will never need us twice in hopes of feeling like a poet, because I am smart enough to know that forgetting doesn’t work if you’re selfish—I don’t forget, and oh, oh how I remember so much, how I remember you so, your body reduced to its openings, the slant of golden hour across your face, artificial tubes stuck down your throat in the beautiful red scenery that is your fleshy insides; your body, how it is still here, yes even in the floorboards, I remember it all: through the filtered
sunlight, your dying grace, fluttering like newborn eyelids.
Michelle Li lives in TX and enjoys writing. She has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, The Waltham Forest Poetry Contest, published or forthcoming in Idle Ink, Masque and Spectacle, Blue Marble, and Lumina Journal among others. She is an alumnus of the 92Y Young Writer's Workshop, and you can find her on the board of the Incandescent Review, Pen and Quill magazine, and the Malu Zine. She’ll read practically anything she can get her hands on, the more absurd and emotional the work, the better, and plays both violin and piano. She also has an unhealthy obsession with Rachmaninoff, morally grey characters, and Sylvia Plath.
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