IOU (Poetry Preview)

春の雪

I.

my existence next to you felt like

                                        wrung rubber    

                           sheepskin.

mellowed down, soft

                around the edges from the time you

swallowed me whole — damp

                           from the way you sugarcoat

your words like they could save me.

something rips in the middle,

                        from where my mouth starts.

snaps itself in half.

                             a part of it dangling,

like last night's regrets, when I ran after you

         and scraped myself on the edge of the

world we used

                      so we can play pretend.

half empty,

                  mimicking the strained sound you

used to chuckle

                             when you'd whisper your

secrets like I wouldn't stuff them

           in my back pocket for later.

                                                                                       (for keeps.)

(when it rains, I sift through them;

                                                                   my collection of you:

the proclamation. shameless, in a way only your softness can build it up to be. moving my resolve — and something inside me that has been waiting for deliverance — more than I had expected; when you told me about the day after your eighteenth birthday and you laughed at yourself – at who you've become. a window breaking a hinge. an unforeseen opening. the death wish — a conversation about reincarnation. a little bit like the tale of leaving yourself behind. something close to a confession, of setting your insecurities on my palms for my conscience to stroke down, to grip it by the neck until it heaves. when you called me a god (whose god?) every time I failed to ease the way you saw the world, yourself, because I can't play the savior. the irony tasting like the aftertaste of being bent over a toilet with all you have being flushed down, throat raw. hesitance. the airy chuckles between secrets, after half cloy jokes. the unabashed gaps of nothing at all, no more to dive into, tongue stuck on the asphalt. tired of the search — of the words you inevitably mouth with no echo. endearingly selfish. the purikura you withdrew because you can't handle showing – giving – me a piece of you. the crack in your voice through the receiver. a reflection that totters, desperate to make me listen, to make me look at you with no one else clouding my vision. miscommunication. lost in translation. crying on the phone while the world burns in the background. mossed over apologies that have nowhere to belong. a misunderstanding that has grown stale for being left outside and untouched for too long.

when you were in front of me, broken grin and no space to rot in between — these didn't matter, didn't stand out to be plucked and hung like souvenirs. but six months later they're all I remember, all I can see when I hold up my hands. pieces of you stuck within the gaps of my fingers. they feel stolen. forgotten.)

the fragments sway in the wind.

                                                                my heart moves an inch.

II.

my world rattles,

        pushes past yours, breaks in the process

when you smile back at me

       caught on the ground, as if you can see

the shards of what's left of me,

      chasing after something I can no longer fit

into my mouth — not like how it used to.

it tastes bitter, the way you come back to me sometimes and wrap your fingers where it hurts, from where I can't refuse. you wear me down, an eye for an eye. a lie for a lie.

(I don't think I can give you anything.

and like the way I dreamt of your back, you left when you understood that.)

you were split second. haphazard. the blue after-stain of a flash, the bounce of a glass before it shatters.

(not meant to stay unlike what you promised.)

it was easy for you to walk away. to leave me half open and decaying against the open air. you too, left me when summer came, and your name, icy to the touch and saccharine between its folds, remained even when spring came. didn't melt away like the snow you left on my sheets from when you asked me if you can linger and I couldn't give you an answer.

I rub my eyes in order to remember.

                                                             to understand.

the way you didn't want to give me anything

              and yet gave me more than I can fit

inside the cup of my palms.

                    the way you swayed me into giving you

a part of me I can never snatch back

and crumple in my own hands.

I still don't know how to understand people like you. people who can burry what's underneath until it bursts. until it blazes and scorches fingers, brittles bones, softens the core — leaves you a little emptier than you can swallow. until you're the last passenger left, refusing to get off, to go home. unmoving, something cold and wet, and curled into itself that it almost breaks its spine. something that reminds me of death, of an empty apartment. of worms crowding something that used to sit on the left side of your chest, tasting of the empty words and the time i spent pretending you meant them.

"I don't think I can give you anything."

the fragments dissolve.

your heart remains still.

III.

(if i am your god, then are you my disciple?)

"春の雪"
Haru no Yuki

© Rizu Lu
All Rights Reserved.