I’m going to break this plank.
My patience is collapsing.
Since I closed the door
on you and me,
I send messages
through
telepathy.
Are your ears now
buzzing?
My messages travel
on wires
where shoelaces
hang.
And in my dreams
I call you
Yang.
I finish unfinished stories
in the theater of
my brain.
Of when you lingered at that bar.
Or when you said you wouldn’t come,
but you came
so far.
When you stole my black pen
and warmed it with your hand.
When a hand
opened
closing
doors
when you could have
taken the stairs.
The peripheral stares.
When I turned around
to ask you a question
and your eyes looked up
from looking
down
there.
When you said nothing
and yet
I heard it all.
When I knew
it was your steps coming
from down the hall,
while I made myself
some tea,
and you whispered over to me,
you makin’ some tea?
I knew it because
you never made it
known.
I could always tell
because it never was
shown.
You promised nothing
so your presence would count
for something.
Oh, that enchanting ode
of speaking in code.
Your defense mode
revealed
what you were
defending.
Never bending,
I knew you wanted to bend.
Never lending,
I knew you’d someday extend,
offering me a balm,
a remedy,
that your
I’m sorry
would mend,
and then
after a decade,
you’d no longer pretend.
Yet I caught your
secondhand
of pretends,
with a secret heart
that upends
like broken pomegranates
in the
carmens
of Spain.
Now I’m the one
who’s stained.
Every noise
annoys me.
The never-knowing
is joy to me.
I know I don’t know
your history
or the details of
your mystery
but I crave your chemistry.
Distance is a mirage,
but it sees more clearly
than proximity.
How could I discard you
when your skin is
my kin?
When,
in my neurotic,
delusional,
shamanic
dreams,
you refer to me as
Yin?
© Stephanie Khio 2024.