Muriel Leung
Leaving or To be left behind–both versions falling out
someone’s ash mouth. Leaving is a car unraveling
at 90 mph. To be left behind is the color red as in
alarm. Stop. Bracket that feeling. A hole the size
of yellow. She swore to me on two cities. Two ghosts
bright beyond the canyons. I love her even without.
Her flesh intervening in the perpetual motion
of my days. Laughter comes out hard and pelts
the dusk. I laugh to dampen the riot like some people
laugh over clowns or accidents. Avoidance or filling
a room with noise to erase an absence. The radio sings
with such clarity. Omit me here. She has left me.
Left as in someone had propelled forward in an act
of leaving the other behind. Someone suggests You’ll live
and that is all I need to poke holes in the current.
What they really mean is You’ve failed. I have grown
too accustomed to static. All my specters
in a box in terrified light. I try and pretty it
but my trying is a version of failure shimmying up
the curbside. What happens now: to keep or relent.
To pool over the silence. I don’t want to be here.
Always carrying these spools of her. Cavernous
and sifting through a blur. The alone too terrible to ignite.