prose poetry
photo art
Dear Reader,
We are so proud to welcome you into the crisp pages of this 13th issue of Future Histories! This magazine is a triumph of individual creation, community choice, collaborative editing, and creative design. In turbulent times, we hope to provide a small, safe space for the Tufts community to speak and be heard. In these pages, you will find stories of moving forward and of looking back. You will find sweet words that gather thickly and sharp words that cut across empty space. Before you finish reading, we hope that you will find a bit of solace in art.
Warmly, Newt
& Rachel & William Co-Chairs,
2024 - 2025
cover art | Emi Gu art | Zoe Haralambidis
Our Team
CHAIR
HEAD EDITOR
HEAD OF DESIGN
EDITORS
NEWT GORDON-REIN
WILLIAM ZHUANG
RACHEL LIANG
JENNIFER GAO
MAITRI MISRA
MAYA CHANDRAKASAN
OLIVIA BYE
DESIGNERS
AMELIA MILLER
SOLEIL YODER SALIM
LEI YANG
ALLAINE LARA
CHERRY CHEN
WRITER LIAISON
WRITER LIAISON IN TRAINING
WEB DESIGNER
TREASURER
ANNIKA CRAWFORD
VALE TESCH
EVA AKDENIZ
MAHRUKH KHIZAR
photo| Clara Li
Featured Artists
Featured Artists
Mimi Zhang
Helen McCarty
Claire Tian
Clara Li
Zoe Haralambidis
Rachel Liang
Emi Gu
And a special thanks to all of our content reviewers!
| Mimi Zhang
Dear Blue Jay,
Why did you have to fly into me before I knew where to find the twigs and mud?
I’m sorry—I shouldn’t start off sounding so angry, it wasn’t something that you could control, It was my fault after all—I never even bothered to look back then
For a while after, I sat on the porch there and waved you and your empty perch good riddance I could never understand why you would fly away from here—I would rather be mad than try to But every now and again your chirps dance in my dreams, and I start to miss it
And sometimes I think about where you have gone off to, If it is warmer where you are And I wonder if things could have been—
I guess I’m just writing to say that tomorrow still exists, Even if you’re not the one who needs reminding
by Nicholas Rishi
photo | Clara Li
A WILTED LOVE
by Max Turnacioglu
“They are a buzzing, stinging, sucking swarm now… ” ~Donna Harraway
reproachful, wait as she draws near, permit life and presence just a little longer bated arms hunger to end her here W life to life, one must stretch — but look and see the nothing
gleaming, teeming planets of eyes accept a world too large in color and size worlds of hatred and apathy solely for flies, desires grand that form belies
hidden behind the glittery panels endless dreams ebb and flow thrashing, churning they burst their channels universes explode in a formless glow a complete space unto its own time falters where life persists visions dance of grass and loam binding man softly for her gentle kiss thick and putrid and dripping and foam weighs the same as a soul why can she not feel the air drift past languid masses borrow her flight let them, a greater being strives to last she hears—
Thwack blood red eternities dead
art | Helen McCarty
CASSANDRA PROPHET OF TROY HAS OPINIONS ABOUT HELEN CASSANDRA PROPHET OF TROY HAS OPINIONS ABOUT HELEN
by Zoe Fisher Coyle
by Zoe Fisher Coyle
Yes it’s true I hate her. She is the reason for the war destroyed everything and everyone I’d ever known and she is the reason I had to detonate. She walked the ramparts when I walked the ramparts it’s true. We crossed paths it’s true. I did not dine with her I did not sit with her she did not sit right with me. Have you seen her hair it is symmetrical. I’m not talking about shape or style I’m talking about every strand is mirrored. Look at the nape of her neck you will see it perfect each side. Unnatural unnerving she is not meant to be mortal. Her mother is Leda her father is Zeus he came in swan form she is the most beautiful creature alive she is not human. She is creature. Look closely at her nose you will see no pores. Her hands unlined. Like a child turned tall turned statue.
Helen said yes to Paris she said yes she showed him to the homegold she came here of her own accord. Thought Paris was richer younger stronger better than her husband Menelaus he is not better. Paris is charming yes and selfish cowardly condescending. Archer not fighter. It stays a game to him. He thought he won sailing away with Helen he did not win.
Helen did not win either. She arrived so proud so beautiful so sure she had made the right move it is a game to her too. A match made by the gods who play with us like children with dolls. We appease them we ask for nothing. They give us pain for their own amusement. They gave Helen pain soon enough. Paris is not a good man he is my
art | Clair Tian
brother yes but I do not like him. My least favorite brother and I have so many. He was bad to Helen she got homesick and even her tears were symmetrical. She could cry and cry and her eyes never turned red just got all bright I fled the sight. Creature. Did I pity her yes of course. I pity a chained dog but still rage at the dog for biting.
The question everyone asks did she ever actually bite yes she bit yes we bled we all bled. Paris did not steal her and she did regret it. She knew Menelaus she knew the lengths he would go. She knew what it meant to dishonor your host we all know it. Basic morals. Bedtime stories. Baucis and Philemon. Be a good guest be a good host our society rests on honor it is a godly principle. It is not a complicated concept just don’t steal a boatful of the host’s gold and don’t take his fucking wife either. Hospitality is the realm of Zeus it is the honor and morals and fundamental rules of the world. Paris upset the rules he upset the world. Helen did not stop him. Helen helped.
It was her choice I know it was. It is my job to know things. If it was not a choice my father the king would have made Paris bring Helen back I am sure of it. If it was not a choice Helen would have thrown herself from the ramparts and been done with it all. Later she would tell Menelaus she tried to do so but that is a lie. She is too aware of her own beauty to die in a bone cracking way if anything she would drink poison but she never tried that either. It was a choice. She chose attraction she chose ruin. When your husband is king of Sparta you do not have the luxury of carelessness. You cannot blame the gods for personal failure.
Her failure Paris’ failure Menelaus’ failure. The men should have dueled and both died and gotten it over and done with in the first act but no. Menelaus wanted a war Paris wanted a war. To prove himself to prove his strength his power. As if power is about how many bodies you can kill is about how many bodies you can bury. Power is what Helen held in that unnatural perfection. Creature beauty. Helen walked the ramparts I walked them too. I don’t forget. Watched the men dying below like dolls. Like gods unflinching. The wind undid my hair the strands whipped my face her hair never moved her face turned towards mine. I flinched.
Ronan, who owns my house
by Jack Wilan
I began the day staring into the face of my landlord. He lives in the walls, so I live inside of him. His face is in every square of peeling paint and every meter of hardwood floor. His name is Ronan and he likes to read Rousseau. So do I, but I don’t own property - thus the two of us are different. As such, he’s a bastard.
I woke up in his house feeling poorly. My head filled with pain rather than thoughts. Not a sharp pain or a strong pain, just a full pain. A dullness that takes away. I wasn’t awake.
I began the day grasping for Tylenol that I didn’t have.
I walked out the door of my landlord’s house and the clouds had moved outside. I wore no sunglasses nor a hat. Thus I sat in lecture hatless.
In my notebook, I drew a man with three long teeth and a silly hat. It was crude and simple and took all of thirty seconds - I liked what I had drawn. Those next to me didn’t see it, they never will, but I liked it. It was something I had made. He made me feel better, this man. But only a little.
Then I wrote a note on my desk. I scribbled with a mechanical pencil I’d found on the ground weeks ago that now was mine. I signed the note and knew it was mine. I never again find the notes I write on desks. The note said this:
“You are now conscious of your breathing”
Someone would see it and take a deep breath.
| Emi Gu
My right temple throbbed and I smiled. It was a smile that wasn’t for anyone else - it was mine. I don’t pay rent for my smiles.
I smiled to myself when I bought a big bag of peanuts at the grocery store later that day.
It was a great big bag of peanuts - far too many for one man. I’ve never bought peanuts. So I smiled to myself.
I rode to the store in a car that wasn’t mine. It smelled of seaweed and cigarettes. It carried me and my peanuts back to my landlord’s house.
At his house, I ate nuts and drank cranberry juice on top of his garage where we’re not allowed
And I read Rousseau.
The chair I was sitting on I’d dragged a mile to put on top of his garage where we’re not allowed.
Once it turned night I went inside and signed to continue the lease. The rent was up by 10% and the light in the bathroom was broken. My head was pounding so I signed my name and went to sleep.
photo|Rachel Liang art|MimiZhang
forever - or reverse osmosis
by Max Turnacioglu
a membrane. envelopes everything. translucent, it glints when it catches the light. covering my eyes and my body and the ground and the trees and the chairs. crinkles. smooth squeaks. it will not permit me. permeate. this much i know. glossy membranes set my mind. red jello in a ziploc bag. lights and sounds. beyond the surface. they love me. i accept the unreal. but now coruscating twilight reveals the rest. she is membraned. soil and roots and warm possibilities. toes meet uniformity instead of her embrace. he too is membraned. i can’t kiss. my lips aren’t soft. my. mycelium touch no other. they are walled. am i still whole? no. a pellucid circlet deigns me. I am permitted. with the crinkles and rustles and clicks. i cannot permit. without contact. fingers feel nothing. what is left? it’s plastic. plastic. in my skin.
art | Helen McCarty
photo | Rachel Liang
will i see you again?
by Clara Li
as per your request, i will leave and return until you allow me to stay.
you turn a blind eye when the sun’s out that’s okay, i get it— distance is a commodity for people like us and anyway, stolen nights could be enough for two.
hunger, satiation, is fast and over quick. our routine—repel, connect, repel—some sick orbit and after, you’re always curled in and away shoulders wound tight and knees tucked close, hiding.
i spend my nights counting the knobs of your spine; the marks i’ve left; the constellations on your skin i wish you’d pull the curtains back for good.
did you know? your brows furrow when you dream of sugarplums or monsters, i don’t know— i’d press a gentle thumb there to soothe you if we both weren’t so gutless.
at dawn, only birds are awake, so i am allowed to look. how perfect our hands, your head in the crook of my shoulder would fit together if we tried.
sometimes you stretch and twist in your sleep— got good lines on you— and i watch you exist in layers, like a painting, between the violet-sweet bedroom air and the orange peel glow of early morning.
indulgence is granted at dusk alone yes, it’s less scary when the lights are dim, when things remain unspoken, but i’d be your refuge if you’d just ask.
the only moments you return my gaze are in the fire. i capture snapshots, then, to remember we exist— the lights are low, the curtains open, and your lashes flutter. there’s words i’m not allowed to say, so i kiss a trifecta your collarbone your neck your jaw one for each syllable.
I never knew I could miss freezing to death, My fingers turning blue as I laugh and shout
Amongst those who are merely ghosts now.
Wandered far from me,
Different paths, different homes, Different times those were
When a weekend in the woods was a trip far from this world
And the games we played were our world and our way of life, Where did we go?
I recall cardboard and dice on the table
Woodsmoke in the air
And some of the worst things ever cooked, That I’d give anything to eat again.
I still have my cards
My sleeping bag
And my childlike wonder, All piled in the basement corner,
Yet no kindred souls of the woods, Willing to walk back all those years, And go numb once again.
art| Rachel Liang
Frost bite
by Eldra Goode
CORE
By Kazi Begum
art| Helen McCarty
Give me the centers of things,
Give me the middle backseat of a car so I can see the road ahead. Give me the twelve on a clock face so I can split the day from the night.
As a child, an Asian pear is a delight, Sweetness that makes sense.
So give me your brain halves and on my middle finger I’ll wear a ring.
all the leaves are wilting
thousands lie apathetically on the children’s park ground and, with every skipping stomp of the little boys and girls, they cry, crunchy wailing surrounds
the other leaves hold on by weak veins; their dried-up stems in dire need of a satisfying quench their land, once flourishing, is now a graveyard for the almost-dead and the very much tortured
on the surface, a carnival erupts as the children play a game called Danger, they shuffle in their rubber shoes and giggle out of anticipation to tag out a friend at the right time; they earn rewards for helping as they risk their lives
the sleepy leaves watch the production unfold, as they always did for many boys and girls, the skippers who would come and go,
but today is different today they cry weaker and a little less painfully
a sweet breeze of faith lets them a little loose, so they begin shifting in their seats a bolt of hope charges up into the sky the exhilarated leaves stand up, and jump and fly and tumble around in circles because, finally, after a massacre of spring and a thirsty drought this dry spell has given out
art | Helen McCarty
nice & dry
by Taarini Gupta
the children join the party squealing and splashing in the puddles of soupy nourishment with their hands spread out, they twirl in circles vaguely remembering these drops’ purpose
it’s all so magical, but this climax is quickly halted and like clockwork, parents invade the musical scene, like they are the army or the police they grab onto the nearest toes and fingers and drag the respective skipper, away from the cold and wet and into the dry and safe
Claire is one of these skippers who lives with a businessman single-father he loves to talk on the phone, as he always does, even today, on this catastrophic occasion when her only umbrella isn’t opening no matter how much she tugs and tussles,
walking earnestly behind her father’s muddy corporate footsteps she glances at the poor little leaves, soaking up and panicking she notices, oh, how they shake, vigorously trying to avoid this washing machine
how selfish she feels, noticing their worse-off condition, unprotected from the ceiling she will soon be granted
I’m sorry that I can’t share my umbrella with you I hope you understand my daddy always said sharing is caring.
Her lavender skirt has become a deep diver’s eggplant-colored wetsuit
the leaves stop dancing,
Still on a very short but important business call her father finally turns around, confused, and urgently gestures and mouths to Claire to open the umbrella he had provided to protect her from fever or flu but Claire is talking to herself now, or so it seems what are you doing? he questions I am taking care to make sure you get home nice and dry now, open the umbrella.
Assisting, he reaches in and click! a rainbow-pattern shade unfurls
Claire smiles with her eyes, cheek to cheek, in gratitude for her father’s help, she quickly hovers the umbrella over the shaking leaves there you go, she says to the bushes,
now you can be nice and dry
The Green Room
by Sara Roch�i
I spent so much time in this room.
The wine spilled all over the frat-picked carpet
Are the stains still there?
You call it the green room and There is nothing green about it
Except the stringy couch with all the ash in its cracks.
The paintings and brushes taking so much space
Something so unfamiliar yet so comforting
Do you still paint?
All the gods in that room
Statues and Tapestries and Paintings
Are they keeping you safe at night?
I knew that room all too well
I knew how to walk around all the candles and plates laying around I knew to turn your lamp off and check the door is locked before going to bed.
There is a new couch now.
A gray couch. I thought it was pale pink, From a single tired glance.
Do you still call it the green room?
art | Clara Li
It falls out in chunks, in globs, not at all a cascade.
It is night. We are all warm and I lean into the drag at the ends of my words. I am drunk. We are mostly drunk, except for Susanna, who is pregnant, and Nate, who is driving her home later. Nate likes to talk about microbiology. He is searching for an organism that eats pollutants. When he can, he wades through the vilest of waters. “The more polluted the better,” he said. But that was earlier, at the memorial, or just after, when we sat down at the long church tables, little paper plates piled with the sweets that all the old ladies had baked.
There are cemeteries all over the place here. Anchorage has one, medium-large, well-pruned, tall-gated, with maverick geraniums in the corner beds out front. One cemetery, and its bones are relatively recent. It seems like there are gravestones around every third corner in the midwest. One night, the full moon takes over the whole night air and we wander down small streets to the graves of our ancestors. My cousin Jean wants to be buried, bare body and nothing between her and the earth. Apparently, this is legal in Wisconsin.
After it all, my parents and I are in a Marriott suite in Rosemont, Chicago which Dad bought with points. I unpack and repack my life, trying to load exactly 48.5 pounds into each of two duffel bags which my mother will fly to Boston the next morning. I am considering and folding and tossing and smushing as my father tears photographs from the pages of a foot-and-a-half square album that Aunt Betsy gave to us. An album full of picture-eating acid and bulky corners that apparently, we are unwilling to transport home. It chronicles a vacation that Dad’s mom, the woman we were here to mourn, delighted in.
At the bottom of the green duffel, I find a small blackboard, slate broken into nine pieces, the middle two dislodged, so it looks like the inverse of a smashed mirror, swallowing light in inwardpointing shards. It is this out of everything that makes me unfathomably sad. I continue my task, thinking, It’s unfixable and irreplaceable, over and over as I listen to the unsticking of yellowed photographs.
I protest my father’s picking and choosing of photographs to keep. He says, “Who would want a picture of the city of Phoenix from the air?” I say, “That’s exactly the kind of picture I would want.” But I don’t know if he kept it.
And then there is the sticky feeling of her journals. Her journals, I’m coming to know her, I can speak to her experience. It makes my skin crawl. My own impish arrogance. People thanked me after I read from one at the memorial, but it felt wrong to be speaking. To be twisting my features into some confusion of sorrow and prostration. I flay myself. I lie. I take her words and make them known. I claim them like a thief. I claim her. Grandmother. She was so dear. What a fake.
Memorial
But swirling thoughts are lost in swirling bodies, so we dance the day away. My closest cousins come from Alaska. Before the mourning can commence, I get hazy with them. I pedal boats not expertly. I point out a circle-ish cops of trees on a tiny lake islet, and when Jean says “ritual,” I chant with them and step in a slow circle. I half expect our dead grandmother to poke her head out of the earth, but all between us is still. We stumble on. They estimate the breast height of the trees. We extol the subjectivity of breasts. And it is not quiet until it has to be.
It is quiet after the memorial, after the big family meal, after the building of the fire. After the others trickle away. We are far past pretense. We talk about our half-memories of her. Of her husband, our grandfather, long gone. There is a picture of Richard on a tractor with him. It is so deep in me that it feels like a memory, but I know that I wasn’t there. Jean only remembers him as the hand that spanked her once. And all I have are stories, journals. Not mine.
I know he loved my grandmother in the mornings. That is how it is written. It is written as an action, and so I know. This is one of the things that I feel I should not know.
I am released in Annandale, Chicago and it is too much a vacation. In one day, I spend easily a hundred dollars. I do it and I am done. I set out to read by the sea.
But it is not the sea. Not a river. A lake, a big blue lake. It is too sunny, and there are flies. I will read thirty-eight pages of my new-used book. On the thirty-eighth page, it says, “Jesus passed out at thirty-nine.” Then–
Rain. Hard rain. Rain like we don’t get up north. Droplets strike me solid. It rains, and the thunder puts the highway noise to shame. It rains, and the world beyond the block is a mystery. It rains, and my shoes will be wet forever. It rains, and I taste my salty upper lip and wave like the trees wave, arms up, as flecks of windblown sand lodge themselves in the side of my face.
Out the window of the late train, I focus on the plants reaching close to the tracks, the undulating line between green streaks and gravel streaks. I focus on the fields. I focus on the low pointy houses. I focus on anything but the numbers on the clock. A woman kicks the door between cars, letting in the sound of our feeble links. I try to remember. I try to remember everything.
I thought it would slip, and it has. All the pieces, tableaus printed on thin paper, the candles illuminating them from behind snuffed out. I have snippets. I will have the images always, perhaps some feeling will linger in these words I wrote down, but the event has passed. I feel my palms alight, my fingers slow. Only this small bit that will last. My aunt, sprinkling a to-go sauce cup full of her mother so gradually on the sandstone shelf we traversed to jump in the river.
These bits are so solid and so small. These memories I hold onto and let fall.
by
Newt Gordon-Rein
art | Clara Li
art
| Helen McCarty
Lazy Lunchers
by LillianMarchbanks
sun leeches and looks for nicks and nooks slurping up brooks soaking into books
the lunchers hide under drooping sides sunbeams slide thirst cried and hunger brings in the tides
the fork complains wrenches and wanes aches do the metallic pains in its reflective veins
heat grabs at feet empty is the street humming the city’s heartbeat makes the food all so sweet lazy lunchers eat
art | Helen McCarty
photo | Clara Li
Peel back my skin, See the larger heart, Widened bones, The empty lower abdominal cavity, The protrusion of the larynx. Ignore the nasolacrimal glands, They leak postmortem. They aren’t our concern.
Scars don’t show below the skin, Nor the art that once adorned The skin now twice cast aside. A soul thrown out, Drained like the blood.
Don’t you know the soul decays?
This must be fresh, Left cold, Dead on the table.
Anatomy: Cutting Back Anatomy: Cutting Back by
by Eldra Goode
Eldra Goode
No life allowed in the lab, Just a dead man’s corpse, And the ghost of a weeping woman. art |
Clara Li
Ode to Motherly Love
by William Zhuang
About three times a year, Mother points at her earlobes, still smooth as flattened pearls, to confess her fear of pain, of being pierced by needles. She turns fifty-four this year, has yet to put on a pair of earrings, while the two hoops in my left ear dangle at her, each void a taunting eye, a restless longing to spend my body. What she never speaks of: The night she thrust me from her pelvis, rendered me this world. I’ll never know how to thank her. I know only the defiance in me, thrumming, gluttonous for life.
photo | Mimi Zhang
At the intersection of time and space
There’s a stoplight that is always on yellow, telling you to slow down, why don’t you?
Last night, I changed the sound of my alarm.
My ears grew callus to the radial, minutes would stretch into hours and suddenly it’s 12:00 pm on a September Sunday, 2026 I begin my day having already lost precious hours of sun, the day’s half gone but I need to shower, to be put back together under the water
Water bookends my day, the bathroom teems with steamy air
She just showered, an unknown frostiness lingers
How will I start my day when I can no longer distill myself?
When wet hair freezes and the sun, she sleeps in as well
I told her I’d arrive in 25 minutes
Can I conjure a metaphor for time that isn’t tired and dry?
Can I create a narrative in which I’m never late?
Trapped in the liminal, the minute hand drags his feet while her majesty of the hour skips away
Now the pavement has fallen in front of me, seconds spiral but I’m in the Fishbowl, already an hour and a half late all the other fishes running on their own hands
I notice the calluses on my right hand ring finger, 15 years of friction between my tense hand and pencil
Words press through to the following page. Even when erased, they leave dimples
Tonight, my clock will run, the day will wash away under hot water 6:54 and already it will be too dark to write
Will she say goodnight to me?
I hear her outside my door I keep my light on, and ask so why don’t you slow down?
C H R O N O T Y P E S BY art | Zoe Haralambidis CELIA DUHAN
Alien Language for an Alien Man
By Clara Li
i’d like to make new words the old ones are all wrong. nothing comes out right with these.
my new words will refer not to things, but the spaces in between those things, and so the missing parts of me will finally have names.
when i proposed my new idea to you, stumbling out of a midnight bar, drunk on liquor and winter chill you giggled and sang, “alien language for an alien man.”
in your lexicon you ask for impossibilities and in lieu of replying i press nails through my palms, cutting through decades, with nothing to muster.
you’re too good to me— you don’t press me for things i can’t give, a kindness i could never repay except by learning how to give those things to you.
i’d love to tell you everything, say more than just it’s complicated, it’s a long story, it’s whatever, can we talk about something else, i’m fucking busy but in order to do that i need the new language, and it doesn’t exist yet.
in an ideal world, my lost ancestors would arrive in their martian aircraft, cradle me tenderly, and apologize for the detour in words i understood.
art| Mimi Zhang
art | Mimi Zhang
hide & seekers by Annika Crawford
oh you –among the folded blankets and sticky china breathing between your knees in a cardboard box
Come out!
(you don’t have to be lost to be loved)
I hold your name, and it goes soft
like the rain in summer tilts in the gust iridescent over the baseball diamond over the dust
we throw our bats and run to the little stone bridge see the creek is pocking hear the chirping of frogs you give me bubblegum from your pocket
I tell you secrets questions I heard
Maybe today your mom will buy us ice-cream
Maybe together hope will listen, tousle our hair and ask us what flavor?
Refl Reflection ection by Evan Vezmar
From a New York Times article:
Life is too short for boring glassware
I think my glasses need an upgrade
Because I spend most of my time looking at clouds
Dark, brooding shadows so heavy they gave me
Scoliosis; that’s what my doctor says anyway
My glasses give me shit sight. Tunnel vision looking For
Nothing
In the future there’s everything to hope for, and just five more steps until I’ll get to the Next step and keep moving
Looking down at my feet to step
And step-by-step missing the view around me
Steep curve to get up the corporate ladder
Can’t stop now, so close to the end
Then start again reaching up, never satisfied
Expectations set blinders for you
But dare to look past stunted sight and stable steps
Life is too short to stare at glass when you’ve got a trillion grains of sand to build whatever you want
Lately I By Vale Tesch
For it’s august & I’m sunk in a sunrise I, on my back in the grass as you three walk back to the car & we’ll be on our way.
You, suspended above as I, in this neon-dark tunneling room, fall into sequins and beads, into supergluing them onto an old, paint-covered plastic palate, later attached onto a traffic cone.
Drive and drive, august, drive me to the top floor of a now-empty parking lot where we get out, and we stop And we look out at this expanse, Way up, & still, I’m turned to follow the breeze blow your hair against your neck
I watch your smile as you lift your heels and touch your nose to the leaves of hanging branches you and those just-sprouted leaves, young
For it’s august, and we watch the blue crescent moon melt; you the candle, you which we found in a cardboard box on our nighttime walk your fire brings out the warmth in her face as the wick burns down slowly.
Dear september, as we spin and fall clipped overgrown grass, piles upon piles; spinning with your long, long red hair (I, falling, falling)
Bodies, alive in a field flash of your camera like lightning. Let the world stay dizzy, for now.
I feel september as you dance moving around the square between pavilion and algae-covered water as hips sway
you, free & the sadness of this being unusual.
September: to make eye contact with the moon.
September death, lain in the mushrooms. And before—two of us, holding hands, because here we are, after all these years
Grown up together & now we hold hands and stumble down a sidewalk in the neutral ground.
& in october I know: stillness with the window open, with the wind blowing outside; I know the oneness of stillness and restless motion. Dear october, a love letter to unrest.
November, when a six year old runs up to a barista and hands her a dandelion. And I’m reminded, the grandest elations remain so very small.
You are my failure to crack hazelnuts the second time I’m at her house, you are bits of the shell all over the floor, you’re her thumb on my wrist as you lean into me,
you’re hazelnut, whole, eaten slowly.
(December, did you hear, when she told me I have a fiddle smile?)
Dear two women, long hair, sitting together on the steps outside their home on Norman C. Francis in front of a bright yellow door. Dear bright yellow door.
Dear january, I smell like fire.
(all my clothes, all my hair, everything around me) You are purple clay, burning christmas tree and soil-sands all over my sweater; you, the burnt marshmallows, clay beads and the manual labour of shoveling.
(their smile, their hands and mine, covered in colors of softening purple-to-orange clay)
They, in another way, have watched me grow up.
You, the way I love you I love you when you’re getting too heavy & I worry I’ll stumble over my other foot; dead weight distributed across all our arms
You the spirit, the life of New Orleans city; you as we carry a body across a parade.
You’re the daffodils I swear taste like lilies (I bite their stems off, preparing to press them between the middle pages of my almost-finished journal) & there on the page, the coffee stain in a planner, covering the week of the 22nd through the 28th.
And february: the way you chuckled when I turn to you and say, that’s you if you’d been an only child.
Your reflection looks like Esplanade on that day of perfect weather. You there, you open sky, you the sun so bright & the moon a sliver, noticeable, away. Moon and sun, together in my same sky.
You—or, instead, those crapemyrtle branches that stretch across, sky-bones under that warm lamp light, you, parallel my again-death as we walk back from smoking by the bayou.
(To be so dense with sky you feel you’re still.)
Dear man who bikes to city park and pulls out his trumpet the day I finally gave a response, the day she calls you & I a crisis, who sits on a bench opposite the bayou, back to a trafficked sidewalk, and plays for those walking past.
(pink pants, a little too long, swishing, dragging over twigs and fallen oak leaves and three-leafed clovers)
Suns shining through all the oak trees. Pause for the spanish moss to hold its winding glow.
Dear hundred knuckles on this tree of these same places I’ve been coming, eighteen years of you. You, the every oak tree, watch me grow up.
I thought I loved you the way I love a New Orleans oak. And, my love for oak trees is far less complicated & still, it feels the same.
Dearest, sometimes I am New Orleans. As I run across a busy intersection in my too-long pants, holding both up in one hand, socks that already have small holes now too getting wet running and crossing and looking up, trying to find the moon between the rooftops because you called to tell me it looks beautiful tonight eye on the ground, try not to step on broken beer bottle glass, & I’m crossing these intersections, & when I stop, I think, these people in their cars, & I imagine they look out their front windows, and think, or they say to their kids in the back, this city , say, only here .
Your shirt and hoodie smell like rain and frankincense. And then—the way it feels like no one can see us, sitting there in that corner table, fries not salty enough, & every laugh and every smile stays on my face a little too long, And I’m missing people, but not in those moments; the you & I, and the way we fall asleep once we’ve walked back to yours, stomachs down, and you say, I need you for silence.
Cinnamon-spicy leaves you tore apart; watch the wind blow layers of water off the bayou (you, unbodied wind, here, still)
And the cypress tell us, slow down .
You whistle the notes to the next lyrical part of a song before we get there off key, on top of the instrumentals and how this feels like time on top of itself, shorter and shorter you, never the grand optimist. & still.
art | Mimi Zhang
