For S (i)
Yun-Fei Wang
after Taylor Swift, “I once believed love would be burning red, but it's golden like daylight,”
for you, i will finally use the word love in my poems. i
wish someone had told me: never fall for a girl who
reads AO3. she’ll tell you that she wishes she had gotten
into coding for her Tumblr blog and you will spend
the rest of your English major years at college
wondering if a pretty STEM boy is leaning over her
shoulder right now. S, i hope you never read this. don’t discover
the glass ramekin of washed raspberries under your
bed. only if you’d let me, i’d clean your wounds & gauze
the linen of your stomach. i’d say goodnight to the
monster in your closet before rubbing my fingerprints
from your bedroom light switch. two large bubble teas
under the Maryland blues. i’ll fold the Uber receipt
into a paper plane & watch it bypass every star before
dozing off in your lap (the plane, not me, i'm looking at you
as a nebula burns away my feet). your college friend’s corgi
has warmer teeth but i would kiss the blister at your
heel & all the invisible scars & not look away when the word
hurt cocoons into an action verb. scream into my heart; S, the echos
ceased-fire when i met you & there are now Christmas lights
& lovers on tiptoes peering at store displays as their
breaths fog up the glass in the shape of pearly cornelias. i’ll
trace each broken vessel on your arm, upstream your
ventricles to the cello calluses at the tip of your fingers & there,
i love you for your cracked nail polish & punctuated Poshmark reviews.
(yes, that mascara looks really good on you even if it costs
fifty-five dollars too much) the kind of seismographic love
a locket cannot smother without trembling. we come
from violent wombs but believe me when i say
that bottled shipwrecks are only temporary taxidermies
& one day you will wake up to an eden of geranium blooms. i
wish someone had told me: you could be at the right
place & right time & still be the wrong person to write this
poem, but S, i’m not letting you drown, even if that means
only one of us survives in the end. i sleepwalk like a stringed puppet
at twilight & i hope you dream of petals by any other
name. we can peel back the wallpaper & unknot the gray
wires & break the snowglobe in perfect halves. blackberry
juices on your lips. S, i would hold your wrist until Lucifer
breaks his left horn out of love. for love. it’s always for love.
wish someone had told me: never fall for a girl who
reads AO3. she’ll tell you that she wishes she had gotten
into coding for her Tumblr blog and you will spend
the rest of your English major years at college
wondering if a pretty STEM boy is leaning over her
shoulder right now. S, i hope you never read this. don’t discover
the glass ramekin of washed raspberries under your
bed. only if you’d let me, i’d clean your wounds & gauze
the linen of your stomach. i’d say goodnight to the
monster in your closet before rubbing my fingerprints
from your bedroom light switch. two large bubble teas
under the Maryland blues. i’ll fold the Uber receipt
into a paper plane & watch it bypass every star before
dozing off in your lap (the plane, not me, i'm looking at you
as a nebula burns away my feet). your college friend’s corgi
has warmer teeth but i would kiss the blister at your
heel & all the invisible scars & not look away when the word
hurt cocoons into an action verb. scream into my heart; S, the echos
ceased-fire when i met you & there are now Christmas lights
& lovers on tiptoes peering at store displays as their
breaths fog up the glass in the shape of pearly cornelias. i’ll
trace each broken vessel on your arm, upstream your
ventricles to the cello calluses at the tip of your fingers & there,
i love you for your cracked nail polish & punctuated Poshmark reviews.
(yes, that mascara looks really good on you even if it costs
fifty-five dollars too much) the kind of seismographic love
a locket cannot smother without trembling. we come
from violent wombs but believe me when i say
that bottled shipwrecks are only temporary taxidermies
& one day you will wake up to an eden of geranium blooms. i
wish someone had told me: you could be at the right
place & right time & still be the wrong person to write this
poem, but S, i’m not letting you drown, even if that means
only one of us survives in the end. i sleepwalk like a stringed puppet
at twilight & i hope you dream of petals by any other
name. we can peel back the wallpaper & unknot the gray
wires & break the snowglobe in perfect halves. blackberry
juices on your lips. S, i would hold your wrist until Lucifer
breaks his left horn out of love. for love. it’s always for love.
YF Wang is an incoming freshman at Wellesley College. She has been recognized by the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards, the John Locke Institute, Bow Seat, and more.