Tan measures his existence in egg yolks:
He says mornings,
she’d miss
the alarm, awake,
nitpick & shout –
Tan cracks eggs
to make dying moons
in shapes
pushed under skin
and shuts his eyes–
again, like yesterday:
halflight night
when he didn’t sleep or bleed below skin.
His: creeled ghost. Mine, fetal curd,
evicted to knit a bone’s lip shut,
same way as my skull – when I was six,
I ran. I am, became, now, the last
twist of his palebleach wrists;
I let him do the breaking alone,
let Tan peel her muscles apart – scars
disintegrating heavy, sunlight
to hollow. Frayed, until the mother he loved,
faded like bruises
I told him to forget to kiss––
we don’t talk, but push bread
through circles of yolk.
Waiting, and holding back
everything I haven’t put into
words:
Sorry Mrs. Coleen
Sorry Mrs. Coleen
Tan stuffed rocks into his father’s briefcase
and told me: not-quite-
-adults age but his father grew
in reverse, was nothing more than two
pounds of mint mouthwash and pilled felt.
Died packing his papers,
packing his papers; they had no body to bury, forgot
his voice at the eulogy.
Barely
a father so flipped, knowing him
meant shrinking and disapperaring, with
the stuffable things. Packed up his papers except for
his shoebox, inside: mercury,
small flies;
her. photos peroxide blonde,
silver bromide, copper mirror, daguerreo-
-type & gelatine. Her mouth
filled with his tie. funny
how I only lived with him;
bruised his ribs apart until
oxygen knit the places
where our bodies didn’t connect –
Tan forgets.
(hid it and buried the rest of them)
Tan takes me backpack shopping to invent new deaths;
says he wants to go back to school, first
folders, then partitions for the paper,
(but not a briefcase)
pencils for words –– don’t talk to me,
but wash the sheets blank in bleach, while
I knock out teeth, malthusian –
I’m a fiend. He said into his wrists:
because I want to write you like somebody learning
to breathe by dividing air into bites,
instant-nows without mincing.
I vow to never touch inner words
on the highway back to his,
five-point sun hurtling–
towards my head as
his mother hums “I just really, really, really like you-”
I know she’ll fly, hit
tilt, bite
my neck against hers,
chew
my lips, until they bloat
like choked meat
too bruised not to
touch.
I push my head up and look
at her wet,
near-spaced eyes. We’ll
make our tears manifolds
and she’ll sing
I know it
I know it
I know it.
(Please; tell me what you love)
Annie Fan is a renegade high-schooler, nitpicky linguist, and was a Foyle Young Poet in 2015. Her work is either stuck to the fridge or her hair or published in the Blueshift Journal, Yellow Chair Review and CALLISTO, among others. She is a prose editor at TRACK//FOUR.