after leila chatti

No birds. No stars. No one remembering how they’re

dead but how brilliant they are. No one saying that

the sun’s just another star, no shaping it in the face of

a lover long lost. No more other realities. No more other lives.

The truth is that we get this one and then we blow it

before we ever had the chance. Again, no birds. No more

metaphors about how they’re flying and how they’re free.

I can’t stand being so full of envy anymore. No more you.

Who in God’s name is the you, ever, anyways? This poem

isn’t for you. I want it to be for me. I want to be selfish in

a piece for once. I’m so tired nowadays. There are no

bird wings or Greek muses that could change that. I’m scared,

and it is not poetic. There is no rebirth that makes this better.

It doesn’t matter that we see the same moon at night, or

the fact that you can pretend I’m the lover stuck in it. I’m just

angry all the time that it saw you first. Would you still love me

if you didn’t have to. If I didn’t say that you’re the one in some

flash fiction piece where you save me. Would you still love me if

you knew how hopeless I was. I said this poem wasn’t for you, but

maybe I’m just angry all the time that you can only appear in stanzas,

anyways. I will make no euphemisms. I am hurt and alone.

The earth is a sphere.

This class is, sadly, flat.

You find no contrast.

Her hair flips again,

your lips flap out of context.

Another Wednesday.

To you: Birds are real.

Birds are real. Birds are real. Birds

are real. Birds are real.

"Trump won, idiots!"

But you are the idiot.

How the turn tables.

A Karen, a boy.

Asks for the teacher--frequent.

A Karen. A boy.

I'd be remiss if

I didn't point out the good:

"THE GOOD" TBA

If the world was flat,

would I push you off the side?

No body no crime.

"Harvard brainwashes!"

Someone's spicy. Whatever,

more space for the rest.

If my business

isn't the government's,

then why is it yours?

I listen to Lorde.

My friend listens to Dodie.

You listen to Q.

*your brother passes*

Whoever's brother just passed,

your mom's a Karen.

You didn't say that.

I'll just pretend you didn't.

Wash my ears with soap.

Today's a good day.

It's Women's History Month.

I beg you sit down.

You like The Office

and giving fans a bad rep.

Pam wouldn't approve.

Aunt B and Tay Swift

are honorary gen z's.

You're the opposite.

I play four square with

a ball printed like the earth.

I see it, I laugh.

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Footnotes

dssdsgfdssdsg what an odd year

ALSO (because there are a lot of new faces who I don't know and won't know my humor) this is all satire. Mostly fake. Some funny. All not serious. Do I have a crazy flat earther in my class? Yes. Would I push him off the side of the Earth if it was in fact flat? *pauses a certain song from the Evermore album* No. No I would not. Would I write him onto snl? Well...maybe. Yes. But that's a whole new ball game and we don't do "missed opportunities" in this house. Also I have his mom as a teacher and she doesn't seem like a Karen, that was a parody of,,,,,well, you know.

“And you’re the hero flying around, saving face.”

The room is dark. It always is. Ren Ronghu shifts, making to light a candle, but Xiu Lihua makes a noise of protest, burrowing further into his chest, so he stops.

You weren’t the one that did it this time, Ren Ronghu thinks, bitter. So why? Why’s it always you playing the hero?

So they both sit there, backs pressed to the wall of the energy suppression chamber, Ren Ronghu’s arms wrapped around her sniffling form.

He will kill her one day.

He owes her no comfort. He owes her nothing. He has her trust, he has her compliance, he needs not get any closer, so--

Traitorously, he presses a consoling kiss to the side of her temple.

“Good now?” Ren Ronghu whispers, quiet, in case other ears are listening in. I owe you nothing, I owe you nothing, you owe me everything, I--

“It’s alright now,” Xiu Lihua murmurs back, voice so small. It’s something like their code for when things really are alright. Like a goodbye with one last touch of the hand. “You can go. Goodnight, ge.”

///

“And I can go anywhere I want, / Anywhere I want, just not home.

And you can aim for my heart, go for blood: /

But you would still miss me in your bones.”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on her, yes?”

“Yes, shizun.”

“Mm. When you devised the plan to turn her against Ren Liufang, I approved of it--using Ren Liufang’s resentment was instrumental in ensuring her loyalty to our sect and against that awful child. Ren Liufang’s resentment was useful. I wonder, though, Ronghu: who is your resentment aimed towards?”

“I’m not sure what shizun is trying to imply. But all this one has ever shown was deference to shizun and the elders.”

“In exchange for?”

“Retribution, shizun.”

“Good. Make sure you remember that, boy.”

///

“I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace, /

’Cause when I’d fight, you used to tell me I was brave.”

“All those years,” Xiu Lihua pants, fingers digging into the dirt at the edge of the cliff. “Did they ever mean anything to you?”

Ren Ronghu says nothing, stepping forward wordlessly with his sword. He thinks only of his parents, only of retribution, only of duty to--

“Xiong,” she sobs, curling in on herself as he stops before her. “Please don’t do this. They’re using you--”

“I was never their pawn,” he answers, coldly. “They were mine. As were you.”

Xiu Lihua breathes heavily, making a broken sound.

Then, “Did I ever any mean anything to you?”

Ren Ronghu looks at her.

“What a stupid question to ask,” he says, “coming from someone as unlovable as you.”

He lifts his foot, and shoves her off the end of the cliff.

///

“And if I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake? / Cursing my name, wishing I stayed.

And I still talk to you (when I’m screaming at the sky):

And when you can’t sleep at night (you hear my stolen lullabies)

You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same.”

“I’m worried about you,” Wang Jianxue says, holding him by the shoulders.

“You need not be,” Ren Ronghu answers, tired. He is so tired.

He has not left this room since he--since. Ren Liufang has been banned from it, for fear from the elders of what she may do if she visits.

He stares out the window. He is done. He has had his revenge.

And it all feels so empty.

Sitting down on his bed, he looks at the yì board on the floor.

“One day, xiong, I’m gonna beat you at this game, I swear.”

“I killed her,” Ren Ronghu says, brokenly. He holds his head in his hands, as if to shut out the noise, “I killed her, Jianxue.”

“It’s alright,” Wang Jianxue answers, consolingly from his spot, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Ge, it’s done now.”

///

“You turned into your worst fears / And you’re tossing out blame, drunk on this pain,

Crossing out the good years / And you’re cursing my name, wishing I stayed.”

Ren Ronghu hears yelling, but he can’t make out words. Blood is pouring out of--so many places, he feels like it’s all he can register.

Xiu Lihua holds him desperately in her arms. Crying, again. Always crying. She’s been a cryer since she was young.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, but the words come out gargled from his throat. More crimson seeps through his lips.

“Don’t be sorry--” That’s Xiu Lihua, he thinks, but it’s hard to tell-- “Ren Ronghu, don’t you dare close your eyes, if you’re sorry, make it up to me! If you’re sorry, then you can’t just die and leave me again, damnit, Ren Ronghu! Shi Jinghui, where’s--”

Gently, he lifts a hand to her face. His sight is blurry, but he think she's looking down at him, now. He cups her cheek, softly as he can.

“It’s alright now. You can go,” Ren Ronghu whispers, to Xiu Lihua's protest, and the darkness pulls at his vision. “Goodnight, meimei.”

He closes his eyes. Breath no longer comes to his lungs. There is Xiu Lihua’s god-awful scream, a horrible wail, and then, at last.

It is dark.

“Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you /

’Til my dying day.”

Footnotes:

Xiu Lihua calls Ren Ronghu “shixiong” because that’s how you address an older male in your sect / your martial older brother! Their relationship is brother-sister like and not romantic.

you see, i don’t think i ever believed in glass slippered- fate or the kind of things in those movies. (are we destined for the stars? or just dumb dumb kids in a movie?). and I wandered across the water lillies one day, nestled amongst a koi pond. a skip-step just a little more, and so it begins. a friendship for the ages. scattered dissonance leading into experimental prose.

rhyme, rhythm and meter some more- will i come to pity what might have been? i see no red red strings, but this- o look! o yell and scream and shout! the king’s page unfurls a scroll to the square, all gathered in their autumn finery: “come one, come all! to see, to feel, to hear these glorious wedding bells ring!”

but i see it finally, a red silken string, entwining itself around six girls, encased in ivory bells all through these teenage fieryness. because if america ever dares to spit on you again, if lady liberty raises her oil-stained fingers through new york city’s dust and haze-filled freeze frames, we shall be there. faster than the morning sun spreads her wings, swifter than the flap of every bald eagles’ wing making their descent into a late spring mid-afternoon. see, these 3 am epiphanies moulded into driving shutter-shields stun a supernovae across the earth, infinity like us shattering the glass. this feels like someday, and god knows we’ve lived long enough to see it.

inbuilt connections across rubber-tinged subcontinents, a triple threat of allusions and shared beliefs. our lace is a weapon, wrapped up in humour with a side of bluntness, this courage permanent in meshed adhesive. actually, her name is, (jade, nhu-ngoc) forever a jewel of this land of gloried fishermen and island escapades.

and honesty will pierce her tongue like rotting roadkill underneath glaring refrigerator lights, and here lies a sucrose luxury. seraphims and sugar fantasies, a blinking contrast. a multiversed memory, here you will hand an ode to aquarian lovers to her mistress.

mediterranean glides across the gulf’s twists and turns of every coming of age splattered across an engorged whirlpool. if love breaks skin, allow it.

a soliloquoy, a silent confession. introspection out of a computer screen. falling apart through paragraphs of poetic inconsistencies, she lands on her feet. (she always does, after all.)

and here’s a glass to autonomy, the sly, fickle thing /

interconnected between probabilities and stars and separate yet one and the same /

two faces to a dime and the unknown distinction between the sides /

a million different universes, a million more alternatives /

in all these parallel worlds,

this is the version where you chose me. / it’s a shame /

(what’s in a name?) /

that they don’t consider us an anomaly /

in another life /

my dominant hand is the left, rather than this world’s right /

(but what does it matter? left or right? /

as long as every other version of me has the chance

to hold you tight) /

and in the universes on the other side of the mirror /

where the clock ticks backwards / or they fill oceans with crystal tears /

endless interconnected threads / do you think we meet in those, too? /

the ripple effect on the silk strands of the multiverse’s cobweb /

i’d like to believe in our odds in all those alternates /. /

because a rose by any other universe

smells just as sweet /

the infinite different realities, i know

it’s not possible that in every one, we meet /

but i say in confidence, and because i just know, in all these parallel worlds, /

(and our love sometimes feels like deja vu) /

that every universe’s version of me

loves every universe’s version of you. /

love, thesaurus definition:

synonymous for throwing rocks at the window

of the dying house in the woods just to hear

something besides myself. to look at the 

broken glass on the ground and think, 

"that's me." there is a metaphor here

somewhere, but don't try to find it.

when i see my phone light up with your

name, i am a thesaurus definition of the crickets in

the meadow past your house: noise, blast, buzz,

clamor, crash, cry. you'll notice none of those words are

actually the same. what i mean is, let's go to

the grocery store and talk about every time we

ever lost our parents in the aisles. how my loneliness

is the same as the squeeze of your heart when you

ran to who you thought was your dad just to

find a stranger's face. what i mean is, let's be birds but not

the singing ones. no, not the colorful ones either. let's be

ordinary and desaturated in our nest of the world.

i love you theoretically, in the way i love

the dying house, in the way i love the dying

city, in the way i love fire- in the distance or

else when it's all falling apart. still there's the

burn on my finger. still there's the airport line. and

still, the broken glass on the ground. 

dinnertime conversation

keeps killing us keeps killing

and i know you don't want to be here

but that's why you have to be here

swallowing down buttery rice grains

picking them out of your throat before bedtime

i can hear you coughing at 3am and

the microwave pushing this boy around this merry go round

we lost it in the deep

we lost you in the deep

asking things like

what is the right way to be happy

or eat dinner or speak to others or

how to grow around your holes be better do better because

learning from your mistakes is hard enough

without you making more and

it's easier to live without questioning if those 'mistakes' were really

mistakes in the first place

Rain. It poured through every crevice of her torn windcheater and permeated her very soul. had always been a wanderer, a daydreamer much like the geniuses of the past, where they beheld formulae, intangible, just out of grasp of the layman’s weary eye. She was never conventional, not a genius in the perfect sense of the word, but one that is evil, a necromancer perhaps. A diamond in the rough.

Her youth is something that she has treasured. For those who saw her- sun tanned deeply brown skin, jet black hair that reflected off of the sun’s crimson rays, forming countless prisms of shades expanding, growing far beyond the rainbows that hide legends, tomes of gold. Her eyes? Almond-shaped, streaked cerulean and violet, never had anything like it been seen before. The things we love never last, and her fading beauty was proof of it. She had come there to seek out a remedy, down a quaint country lane, out of a children’s book almost.

“What do you seek, child, and do you think this is where you shall find it?” a man’s voice rang out through the gathered oak trees, lilting and swaying like the wind. He emerged from a nearby bench and walked towards it, his calloused palm extended. “The Fountain Of Youth, at long last. Oh, I won’t be long sir.”, she wondered aloud. He muttered something incomprehensible then, and beckoned her to approach it.

The fountain was simple, unassuming, really, but no Trevi or Flora could ever match its excellence. The only decoration was a carving ‘levis est puer dominae suae’. The Latin she had heard, whispered from alleyways and the friends that had long slipped through her fingers escaped her then. She could only have faith, as she stepped forward for a drink from its freezing waters, not in scripture any longer but in what object lay before her.

She is awoken by the steady drip of rainwater, yet again. But not a torrent, reminiscent of tempests she is thankful to evade, but a drizzle. A haggard woman lies before her, her back strewn across the cave’s floor, a cripple. There was a glint in her almond-shaped eyes, however, vaguely, almost hauntingly familiar. A gentle, croaky voice erupts into the shadows “R-Run, while you can. RUN” and the glint disappears, a gentle glow replaces moves , ignited by the urgency in her voice, but she is stopped short by another voice, the man. He was back. “Youth is a flighty mistress, child.” Suddenly, it comes flooding back, as the man’s laughter rings out through the tepid air and memories rewind in her head- this was what was carved on the fountain. That was the last thing she remembered, as she felt her worn knees buckle to the cold, hard ground. She does not remember an echo.

i never thought much of bees.

sara did though. she planted flowers for them in the window box outside her apartment, liked to watch them as they ducked into the lilies and zinnias.

i asked her what she thought of the bee movie once and she gave me one of those looks that said go to hell but also don’t stop talking. please; the silence is killing me slowly. or maybe i was too busy looking at myself reflected in her to really notice.

but now she’s gone and the bees are rattling in my skull.

it tastes like bitterness and sour milk, and you should've known better than to expect otherwise.

you think that bravery is a learned trait. you spent the first years of your life undoing your gag reflex by drinking your own bile, and maybe that is why you've managed to endure everything for so long. maybe that is why it was inevitable.

your esophagus contracts. it is an ugly thing when everything spills out in a sickening squelch, gushing out in a muddy pool. again and again. 

when it ends, you are empty. strangely, you could not have been better.