Noctilucent - ZHIZHEN CHEN '29

The world looks at you and sees

A light suddenly switching on in a dark room

A brightness that burns so intensely they forget

That you were also standing in the darkness too

…

When you cry you look like an angel

it’s as if sadness was made for you

stitched into the corners of your mouth 

before you were born

Like the way it is for the dead deer heads mounted

glassy-eyed on the wall of my white friend’s living room

Their lives, framed and bragged about

as ones so easy to take away

Did you feel the same way?

when they said they found you standing

shivering, bruised, your face wet

You, so tall on the edge of your apartment building

When they told me, it’s as if you whispered in my ear

Let them look

Let them see how broken I am

Unrecognizable on the concrete sidewalk

You smiling even then,

looking back with half closed eyes

for someone who would never come

Save me

Please, save me

Back then, your silent weeping

slid across the side of my head

and scattered behind me

Now I’m halfway across the world,

a year later

“You didn’t know?”

Your image in my mind fixes to a stop where they found you

The cars honking and honking endlessly on the streets

because anger is so often found in places it should never be

Like how I love you

but I hate you

for trying to leave without asking

if I was okay with it

if I wanted to go too.

Somewhere, every 12 minutes, one life slips away on its own

One in seven thousand ninety two people

Why did it have to be you?

I run, lungs tearing

up a hundred stairs,

biting my lip out of panic

hard enough to taste that faint iron tang

A single umbrella leans against the stone wall

spins

then falls

I lunge, reaching for your wrist

Then I wake up

No roof, no wind, no cars.

Just the shape of you

missing in the air beside me.

And I wonder if maybe

that was the closest I’ll ever get

to holding you again.