play, pause, replay

of fireflies and forest fires

Sometimes I wish to live again and write something

ordinary and beautiful just like the day,

I thought I wouldn't lose you, but I did.

There's nothing much left in the old apartment

we share back in our college days:

A hint of orange blossoms, sky-blue paints

splattered across the door edge, the typewriter

from your father's time, rhododendrons . . .

Not much has remained but the growing ache

that haunts every corner of this room.

You used to play a song on summer afternoons

when the sky would be yellow and the street

would gawk at the sun like another nameless beggar.

Later, we'd drink red wine from ceramic cups

and read the novel you didn't get to finish last week.

For once, I was happy, Daisy. Like another next-door

girl drowning in the waves of love.

My finger still bears a scar in the shape of a 

broken star, the one I got on the day you left me.

Somehow, it numbed the pain I thought I'd get

after seeing the empty apartment.

And so, I took the blade and plunged it deeper

into my skin; I could see your green eyes, your 

long piano sessions, and our green lover's sleep.

I'm playing the song you said you'd never play again.

It's the favorite song of your Mom, who burned

herself to death in front of you.

But I'm not thinking of that anymore, because I've 

already burned enough for you, Dee.

It's a song for the dead, the cursed, the left.

There's a burned butterfly hole across it, reminding

me of vast oceans and stretched sunshine, 

green poetry and Sylvia Plath.

 The walls look unusually blue in the afterglow. 

Mirrorballs glow in the hallway, 

dwindling in the violet rain. 

You were my filthy lover, Dee. And I still feel so 

high I might vomit shockwaves of love.

What started in those evanescent hallways has 

ended in the graveyards. But that's how it works. 

You fight with no gloves on, and you lose and die.

But the one that doesn't has to bear the jinxed life. 

The heart that was surgically cured 

in the dim city lights and rusted rooms.

Goodbye, Dee. There was never a why of us.

But I really hope we had a neon-lit city of

fireflies and forest fires.