(I know nothing about mechanics and would not. But I know that)
It wasn’t you who played chess with me that time, and it wasn’t chess
but the kind of marbles that could and are better used as bullets,
letting go of and no return, now that I come to think of it, like we used to play
pingpong not as pingpong, but as bowling, placed but not like a bowling, like a
solitary pin, at the end of a line of military chess
pretending to be dominoes, which we’d pushed, a sleight of hand, always yours,
and the pin would crash into the squeegeed chip cone waiting at the table’s foot and I
would hurr(a)y off another grayish afternoon because two wouldn’t make a good game
of pingpong,
two wouldn’t be enough, because there needed be a referee
outside of us, our strategies, not for each of our scores,
but nice shots and lousy ones, flying comic comments
when the two of us were bored by the repetitions,
batting, dancing, dancing differently picking up the runaway ball.
Now that I come to think of it I’d never said, to you or any, One more story
and then I’ll go to sleep and that’s only luckily because most of the time I cannot
sleep, and yet wanting, never failingly, to be good
after all. After all that we’ve witnessed—in the bathroom mirror the gravels pandaing out faces agitated by my usurping turn of the motor’s handlebar on our way, under our purple plastic poncho, to the supermarket for the candy bars that mom would more easily permitted me had it been her, not you, that took turn to care for me that day that I demanded you to keep from mom and what, whatever you don’t know that I asked mom to keep from you, the rain that, miraculously catering
to my words, was not rain, not for us both and that turned out a bird shitting in your collar, the back of your head, from the willow that, like the fish somewhere in the pond that we intended to visit, might have been the one you’d bought and we’d left outside somehow for mom wouldn’t be happy to have them, keep them,
not for what they are but for how you’d had me them—together or separately there
seems never one word that could be shared. Never, like the careless shapeless slices of
watermaloons’ skins that you’ve slashed and slurped, and yet told me to leave there,
don’t exhaust all the red, and I always seemed to refuse, though in silence, in how I
kept chewing, digging up all the pulp because if I had followed your advice then it
would be nothing that’s left,
nothing that’s left not for staring but chewing, tasting, and I would always be, and am,
disappointed by nothingness. Worst of all
the nothingness that comes, after all.
But there was another one, always, st(r)anding between me and mom and you
with not critical, but tickling eyes, and the night he’d taken up my gloved hand as we were crossing the road alone, without mom there were no bad dreams
for me, there was no dream at all, unlike when I have played wild with you there’d
always been visions of demolished,
torn old buildings that we weren’t allowed to penetrate in daylight
but about which you told stories that weren’t stories, but facts, never written memoirs
sprinkled with allegorical warnings.
Others’ stories, and yours.
And then I’d been to a hotel, and then I dreamed of the hotel,
corridors empty and long, all the room doors shut, which is only natural,
which only proves that this is not the hour of clearance,
which reveals the pleasant truth that at least I know I had a room and better,
having not to have a distinguished sign to have it recognized, unlike you, dad,
now that I don’t call you by name as mom wished, as you and mom
didn’t have to call each other by names and so that had been why I had to call you
by name, not dad I don’t literally recall your company
and it ends when I opened my room’s door
and see, sure, a more caved-in version of my anteroom that you’ve bought but haven’t
seen.
Was I wrong in fancying, subconsciously, jigsaws, building blocks and cheap
romances yet never solved maths or else
cared for failed P. E. tests? You finished assigned journals for me. The neglected are
the more important things, as you would have said though you never had, and those are what fail me at calming down—as my heart futilely races
and coming to a right conclusion—as ink again splatters through the paper and
the tip of my pencil ricocheted off brainless force.
Anxiety grows, and it’s biting the nails again. You would not approve though you were exempted
from knowing that I have this habit. If fortunate you is plural, you and mom, you
and nan, you and pa, you and someone that you have but I’ve never known you have
just like their calling you and me. But where empty words linger
there stand only emptied chairs.
A house suffers through its true trials only when the inmates are gone.
They should place a sign here, a cardboard, a gesture, a comical stare, if all
signs are put on only after
actual, maybe fatal misfortunes.
Surely I’ve never had a dream like that. I’ve had you.
And after this sentence this could not be helped to go on.
(Something must be written.)
Haitian/Helena Jiang is a postgraduate majoring in English Language and Literature at Shanghai International Studies University, China. Her poems, translations, and paintings have appeared or are forthcoming in Ilanot Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Arkana, Corvus Review, and elsewhere.
Image: reddit.com
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Heavy Feather Review 