Written by Jasmeen Kaur
Illustrated by Kian Amos
"It doesn’t take much to make a beautiful thing disappear— only heat and time."
June 28, 2014
Warm flesh reeks of a hillside
summer. Pollen coats the
stars unjustly, but we never
bothered to look up anyways. We—
contained well by fevered memories of
a damp and aching night. Kissing in
Tennessee tastes like poplar, maple,
blackgum, birch—
we, too, join in with
such beings that fall. I hallucinate, but it
easily could have been the
mist.
We attempt to leave our youth
behind as a cacophony of prayers
recite themselves on
slick granite—
I never got to see over the
edge of the
waterfall, but
what other side
could there
possibly be?
June 5, 2015
Was it June when we sauntered along the
crooked Savannah? I remember
gazing to cherish
the reddened cedars for their
length, for their overwhelming
quiet. Sometimes
I would clutch you for the
sake of your realness—
I loved only shadows then. I told
you how much
I wept when I left, how much I would
miss those trees and your hand
in mine. I can
see it so clearly now— our youth
dripping off of us the
way morning compels dew,
only for it to
vanish. It
doesn’t take
much to make a
beautiful thing disappear—
only heat and
time.
January 1, 2019
In front of me, you appear, and I, not yet
deeply wounded, let you remain auspicious.
I prayed many nights for
someone like you, but not you, and in that,
I was certain.
Another year when I
witnessed you not see
me, watched you walk past me—
it reminded me of us as
children, when all I wanted was
your knee grazing mine. I reach
to touch you first, the moon leaving us to
talk. You, a silver asteroid and I,
a small sun, become we—
perihelion.
We sleep well into the
red morning— three years of a noiseless
comunion. Is love just a
memory? Does love come
from memory?
Orpheus, with his poetry and sound,
could make the world around him move, but
I revolved
for you.
January 3, 2019
You run your fingers
through my hair, but I
do not want your touch—
what is
a body, anyways? Art
is not fond of the world, but tell that to
artists. At the museum, you
peer into me, but my attention is
towards
the light inside.
I disappear while you
dissolve into a past life—
why want a
ghost for love?
You graze the nape of my neck with
your lips, uninvited.
To rest with you on the last night
is not enough.
January 13, 2020
January becomes its own being.
How many winters will we
let pass through us?
Our bones in a
biting crowd, I can hold my
own hand, but your shoulder is
mine. Walking along a starlit
Brooklyn, we share headphones, we let the subway
leave us. Hot coffee and dollar
pizza in the mid afternoon; come
evening, I drape myself over
midtown and
you succumb. I could sense
how you would do
anything for
me, how you would learn to be
my kind of quiet. You
beheld my opening—
on our first night, we walked
so that you could use
your eyes, your mouth, your
hands—
wanting to touch mine. You are your
own testament to time, to waiting for
God—
a dream dreamt
for many nights.
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