Aria Shum | Poetry

after Richard Siken

First of all, why don’t we think of an ending?               

               Like where this all goes. Where this is all supposed to go. What it all should mean, 

                              this axiom of its existence. This paradigm of love. Love and other, 

                                                                                                    undeserved things. 

Something great then. A dream we’ve all dreamed, a fairytale story, romance for the ages!

                              The silk-woven narrative from poets and storytellers is gilded and glittering: 

               two people meet, they fall in love instantly— and everything works out in the end. 

                                                                                                                Everything is perfectly certain, except you. 

Then, why not give it a definition of sorts? Perhaps a syllogism of untimely moments scrapped together.

               If you are a child, then your mother is smiling. If your mother is smiling, then 

                                                                                                                        the world has stopped caving in. 

If you are in eighth grade, you are folding love notes into paper airplanes which make their maiden flight

                              in the hallways of high school. 

               If you are in high school, you are buying drinks on the street corner, playing your part, and

                                                                                          kissing that girl you kind of have a crush on. 

If you are kissing her, you are kissing another girl two weeks later and wondering 

                                                                                                               why it all feels the same to you anyway. 

You are passing the corner again when you realize: 

                                             the most romantic thing you’ve ever done is make eye contact with the cashier. ​

Then, let’s not be too specific, how does that sound? 

               Forget the names, leave behind syllogism, there is no logic train, no equation— only,

                                                                     the unfamiliar shape of that word in your mouth, nearly breaching 

the double portcullis behind your lips, more like an unrealized sound than anything

                                                                                                                                                     you truly believe. 

Outside the window, there is a nest of sorts, two birds flying, and you think, maybe this is what it means.

                              This is the ending we all hoped for, this is 

                                                                                                                                     the framed picture of home. 

Of course, you try to recreate it. 

               Turn water into wine, spin straw into gold. Pull the cards from your chest, a miracle from your ass,

then drink, 

                              drink until you're bleeding kerosene and pissing gasoline. 

                                                      Graze your lips against the shape you fought so hard to realize, touch it, love it, 

indulge your hands against the body of it, 

                              beautiful, soft malleable body— trembling under you until you realize 

                                                            alchemy is not a shortcut to immortality and elysium is not so easily found. 

So hold back a little. Stand in the doorway, count the futures stretching down the hallway, and

               wait— 

                                             don’t step out just yet. 

From the bottom of the stairwell, 

               you hear someone call your name, and according to the principles of everything,

                                                                           you’d like to give an answer and believe in something for once. 

               But instead you’re sprawled about and tumbling down, feet clumsy hands clumsy, body supine,

spreadeagled on the bathroom floor, 

                              palms wiping blood from your nose, tracing the handprint of your father, fingers grasping,

smearing red all over some semblance of the frame, searching for the shape, 

                                                                                                         but it’s empty— the depths within the bird’s nest, 

the traitor’s meaning of love, the home that was, definitively, a home 

                              until it splintered into a disjointed collection of uneven parts, 

                                                                                                         a mere scattering of what used to be. 

Okay, you try again. 

               Roll the dice, perhaps play some Russian roulette. Load the barrel, spin the chamber, stick the gun

straight up the roof of your mouth and shoot three— four times 

                                                                                                                                       just to make sure it’s empty. 

               Run a test of the gambler’s fallacy, shoot blind shots into cheap nights until you realize,

okay, maybe, 

                              the definition of insanity does apply even if it was written by particle physicists, and

perhaps this thing you’re searching for isn’t anything more than a 

               once-in-a-lifetime big bang by-chance chemical reaction bleeding out black and hazardous byproduct,

the molecules all burning around bouncing about all spelling out 

                                                                                                                                                      something impossible. 

In the empty home, there is a lonely room cradled with a multitude of moments. 

               You, reaching stubby arms toward your mother. You, driving home with your sister. You, on the

floor of the room. 

                              Then your father, in the dark. He is saying something. 

Asking perhaps, 

                              but the shape of his lips are melting into the unreadable shadows of the room, and you

                                                                                                                                  wouldn’t want to hear the answer anyway. 

In the corner, the shifting picture. Dirty stillborn dust. And the rain outside. All the rain, the sky gray, and you

               don’t know what to do with yourself. 

How to dance, how to move, 

                              how to sob into these unwieldy limbs of yours, cry in a way that makes sense to this world.

                                                                                                                       As if they could ever make sense of you. 

               The room is shivering now. You are huddled in the corner, next to the frame. 

So many soft-spoken moments cradling the room. 

                                                                                          So many unfortunate ones, yet still 

               you feel those uneven parts and disjointed pieces stitching back into 

                                                                                                                                       something bittersweet. 

Sit with them, won't you? They are kinder than you think. 

               See, the shape is hidden, just below the horizon, rising with the sun. 

                                                                       On the floorboards, the light is already pooling. Spreading like water. 

From the bottom of the stairwell, you hear someone calling your name. ​

                              Outside the window, the sky bright bright blue. 

                                                                                                                       Then, the two birds flying 

                                                                                                                                                                      again.