Your Death / Emma Nguyen

Your Death

Emma Nguyen

The cool night was low on our age of sixteen We were broken into youth, Dropped into our dresses Smooth and aggressive, triumphant and wonderfully queer I remember you by the beach seeing through my vapor’s eye Your alien palms white like chalk on the sidewalk Into the black holes in my squirming sheets We took our hands, snuck around lighted streets Brought our years to the table, learning and smuggling Through the gutters and past my mother’s screams Past our ankles blew the breeze, small and dreaming Dumbed down, filthy and pretty We were really on a roll Oh! How I took pride in your tender cries Guitar in hand you’d sing of your death The shades of your hair suspended from dark highs Saw you as the only one, as you saw me too Must’ve known what you meant in your song When I froze downstairs, crying at your glittering feet

Your death was the life of our days Now you sit at your piano, Mumbling of your death Playing quiet notes the color has changed in your song While I stand backstage, your song empties me in my bed

The sound is not music but a noise A screech in a gray garden,

Now, not one kick in the beating white light