I.
I wake up as a goldfish in his bathtub, the last morning of a fortnight, vision
yolk-murky as he sleeps next to me with his eyes strained open,
hands ribboned around a carcass that has drowned
one too many times, all bloody from the promises he can no longer
stuff into his back pockets —
and it reeks;
his half open briefcase left on the entrance,
spilling two faces I don’t recognize.
It bruises,
the tooth he grips in his palm, the amulet — searing, spat out and left
on the sidewalk from all the times he was just a man. A head in the crowd.
A name. A story untold chafed around the spine — the blur of legs
that couldn’t keep up with the world, with society’s greedy mouth.
A thousand hands, pulling at the skin that serve as a tablecloth to present
the feast — more than he can offer, more than rough fingers that shake
around each tap of the same greased up sticky keys,
more than the howls muffled under the cotton
of his childhood duvet — takes everything he once thought
he could be, the romanticized version of the truth, of fate;
the concrete dismal, unforgiving — have we
forgiven ourselves for the version of us we can no longer be?
II.
It spills,
the still-wet remains of last night’s affair
discarded in his trash can; when my throat closed in inside the stall
of a train station toilet and he didn’t say a thing, tongue heavy,
a choked up confession, the masks we wore before on the very pit,
soiled with questions we still don’t have
the heart to answer.
The excuse tastes metallic on the edge of my mouth, peeling off
skin to reveal a core I can no longer look straight in between the eyes.
The seeds have began to take root, somewhere under the carpet,
under his shoes that know where he’s been.
I hold his hand because that’s all I know,
(that’s all I’ve ever been taught to do when a man cries).
III.
My hands are stained. Red from the bathtub he refuses
to drain, from the remains of who he was before
that Sunday morning – wrung clean and tasting
of izakaya smoke that found a home under his clothes.
When he wakes up, there’s a lie
masked as a kiss on the corner of my mouth,
all too nice,
bleached hair dyed red that stain
the bland yellow of his bathroom tiles; a dirty shade
I can’t erase. An unforgiving color I can only replace
with a darker hue that burns and spills over
where I’ve rubbed enough to tear.
I cut the cord, of the phone,
of a string the shade of his hair,
the moment he proclaims he has learned to love enough —
that he can sacrifice himself at the thought of me.
IV.
He tells me he doesn’t own a blade,
but I’ve started to wonder —
why the saltwater has begun to sting
whenever he’d drag me into the sea —
why he’d come back with more lines
than I had counted on the dinner table.
He tells me he’s exhausted, but I take it as a bullet,
and I blame him for all my wounds.
The silence stains the carpet. The milk’s all murky. I’m sorry. I don’t know
how to handle you when you’re angry. He tells me, I’m okay.I’m tired.
I’m worn down and I hate Mondays. He whispers that ever since
I’ve learned to love the color red he has started smiling,
(but I’ve never seen him smile).
He tells me this, and stops letting me count the way
he’s ripping himself apart.
Is it because I’ve never learned the act
of loving, or is it because he lies
to stop me from opening his dress shirt
and finding nothing underneath?
INTERLUDE.
I wonder if cracking yourself open
to let someone in who’s broken is considered love.
If it’s enough of an answer to the questions that are
never said out loud — the questions that are never
even thought of. So insignificant, that it can only exist
and settle in your mouth. If it’s as throat heavy
as a confession, if it’s as foolish as offering yourself,
to be picked apart, to be ruined, a sacrifice —
and believing that someone drowning,
like the image in your reflection, can mean
what they say — when all you’ve ever known
is to mouth lies.
I wonder if we can love the people we mirror,
when we can’t even swallow around
the thought of ourselves.
V.
There’s blood in my mouth – from his hands
that keep trying to dig deeper than he can reach,
so instead he grabs everything he can and leaves
me frayed open.
In the end he doesn’t take anything.
I grow weary, angry — I tell him If you wanted to kill me,
you should’ve done it when I had my back turned.
We’re so young. Soft and pliant against the world
that the act of loving rots us inside out.
He tells me That’s not my intention, the same dirty red
on his lips, on his hands — words washed from
the confessions I packed into his briefcase that morning
when he looked at the time instead of the skin on my back,
still gaping from the night prior. It’s not your fault
we’re both empty. The words are steam pressed. They cut
through me, sharp, and cleaner than his shirt on the hanger —
hanging by a nail.
The words weigh heavy on my mind. It settles.
The blood doesn’t have time
to dry.
VI.
I wake up as a bloody goldfish in his bathtub, and this time
I see him with a blade.
I don’t know whose blood is in my hands.
I’m starting to grow tired
of the warmth, of this shade —
of the blood in my hair.
In my mouth.
He tells me it’s hard when it’s Monday. I proclaim
something in return, the first bloom of a bruise,
but he keeps his back turned— Is this an invitation
for me to kill? To reach in and take
everything that has once been offered,
slice it at the neck,
at the first russet glimpse of a rose before it blossoms.
Is this nothing but a weed? Born to be cut,
uprooted before it festers.
There’s something ugly
about the truth. The tragedy
he understood when he found nothing when he reached in.
The trash is dry.
The masks are long discarded.
He doesn’t ask me why I begin to cry with him, why I
threw away the carpet and nailed his suit up on the wall.
Why I hid the piece of him that broke off —
because an eye, can only be
exchanged for an eye.
A tooth for a tooth.
He doesn’t ask why I stopped asking who the faces are,
why we’ve accepted the truth —
that a person running empty can
never be enough.
The questions morph — grotesque, a state so
garbled they can no longer have any of
the answers we’ve tried to dig through.
The garden rots, carried away by the tide,
from the clogged up sink that can
no longer drain itself.
“Is it a sin to bleed on those who didn’t cut you?”
In the end, all I get is the milk in his bowl.
VII.
He tells me he loves me, and grows sick
from the words, of the rotting promises that keep spilling
out of his briefcase, of the glass that the hands kept filling —
and doubles over to gag the thought of me
out of his throat, drowns his head under to compensate
for my hands that stopped holding his. It’s time
to drain the bathtub, I think, wash yourself clean of your wounds.
VIII.
He throws away the blade and lets go of the tooth
he’s always gripped tight enough to scar. He abandons
the color red — and escapes, leaving
his briefcase under the cereal bowl, next to where
a waiting proclamation decomposes.
I wonder if cracking yourself open
is considered love, if it is enough of an
answer to the questions that are
never said out loud.
He gets on the morning train and leaves
a safety pin as an apology — in hopes that it can
close the way I’ve been ripped apart.
It stings, but I wear it as a medal.
I wonder if we can love the people we mirror,
when we can’t even swallow around
the thought of ourselves.
Have we forgiven the version of us we’ve decided to be?
Koi
© Rizu Lu
All Rights Reserved.
Saltroom Archives 