When you asked me if I’d miss you,
I felt the sinister creep of old friend “No” in my throat.
I looked at you,
And you at me,
I spoke against you—from your shadows,
But I remembered,
There was a time I liked you.
This girl has beady eyes and a round face
She’s loud, messy, and rude.
She’s the things I kind of want to be
Minus her choice of blood-stained pyjamas.
She struts around in them at night,
and the stains are stubborn stains that refuse to bleed out the cloth.
I see her in old pictures
In the back of my mind
She frolicks wildly, full of life and memory.
Full of strange people and faces and places
Full of me.
I look back sometimes
Back at those beady eyes.
She asked me if I would miss her
The “Yes” had slipped out of my mouth.
It wasn’t a complete lie,
But you reached out for me,
Buried your head in my shoulder,
I smelled you and tilted my head away
Slightly.
Was it disgust?
Repulsion?
Envy?
Anaphylaxis.
I wanted to push you away,
But you held on.
And I glanced at the other woman
Behind you,
the one I had shared my doubts to
And as you held my body,
We shared a face,
A guilty, secret smile
A quiet agreement that we were not where we wanted to be.
For a moment,
Our minds were one and the same.
I don’t know when I’ll ever find myself again—if I even do.
I lost myself a long time ago.
And as close as I am to it,
I’ve forgotten the joy of youth
Full bloom, true youth.
Since then I’ve forgotten how to say “I love you.”
What does that mean?
How do I feel it?
Is it an object of my abstinence?
I’m no ascetic.
I left her as she was.
I never did look back.
I desired nothing but a quick severance from her.
Her eyes,
Her big nose,
Her xiaolongbao face that seemed to vortex her features
into a singularity
She wasn’t special to me, not really.
Because if she was I would have cried on the way home
Like last year.
What I mean to say
Is just that I miss you,
I miss us.
Somewhere out there you’re living, breathing,
Here I think about you everyday.
I want to dip into the cookie jar of memory and fly away.
I would relive it, every second.
I would love what I have hated,
Hate what I have loved
Although I have never hated anything,
So, first I’ll learn to hate.
Even you,
In all your imperfection,
You’re perfection.
Walk with me, talk with me, be grotesque with me,
Because if I am to enjoy this life,
I need to feel,
And I want to feel everything.
You asked me if I would miss you.
I do.
Guest Author: Junior Charlie Rivera-Gu (she/her) from Miramonte High School.
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