kelly-zhangWhisper

American
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because,to henry, love elana: / i miss you because i know the most action you’re getting these days is slipping an extra big tip into the delivery girl(who forgot the napkins again)’s hands, and i know her hands feel nothing like mine. so i’m sorry because we always had eggplant pizza together which everyone else thought was strange, because i miss you, because sometimes – i hint at you to our delivery girl so she’ll tell me how you’re doing (i hear you have the flu, drink some fluids other than dr. pepper, okay?). / To Elana, Love Henry:
16
May 19, 2012
if it looks saddecember rain is nothing if not sad. / it leaves tracks in the snow everywhere, / like God
7
Oct 9, 2011
You kissthe same way people / breathe in / the first air of summer.
4
Jul 15, 2011
WavesI remember summers ago with a boy, who wasn’t so sweet but could read aloud like a gypsy and read your hand lines like a priest. I’d kick off my shoes and we’d spread a huge blue sun-bleached towel on the sand and prop up a chair. The metal grew hot in the sun. I remember a cooler full of Coke cans and plastic cartons of strawberries; we lived off those for days at a time (along with the occasional Hot Pocket) because we were too lazy to bike out to town, and it was too hot to leave the wooden floorboards and ice towels of our house. The windows let in the evening lights from a few miles away and the distant sounds of Spanish street guitarists. Sometimes we clambered up on the roof to hear them better, and you memorized one of the songs they’d play every night, spinning out a rough version on your guitar. But you couldn’t pronounce the words as well. / When we went out on the beach, you hated the waves so you stayed high from shore while I waded out until the water reached my belly, feeling the coolness seep through my shirt and the sand riffle between my toes. I’d always wanted you to join me. I wish you didn’t hate the waves, but you did so I just stood there alone, taking in salt from the breeze and the laughter of two sisters dragging buckets of water they could barely carry from the ocean to their sand castle. Again and again they came and went so that they could fill up the moat, because you couldn't have invaders from the next kingdom over to be able to kidnap the princess so easily.
22
May 7, 2011
Throwing Lettuce (revised)you asked what I thought of you / point-blank, blunt / Bewildered, I examined the cross-shaped birthmark on your arm (you were agnostic)
19
Mar 31, 2011
ClementineShe used to read me poems she’d made out of glass and soft wool, and I’d always fall asleep to her lilting words. A ring sat on the 3rd finger of her left hand, a pair of kissing silver fish. She twisted it when she was nervous, and when I looked at her for too long. / Although I am sure she often looked at me for longer. / Some days I almost forget her name, and it makes me sad. So I wrote it down on a slip of paper and now keep it in my pocket, for that insane fear of letting her go entirely. Clementine; she was beautiful. One detail I remember clearest was she only had one freckle in her entire life. It sat just underneath her left cheekbone, and she liked it because I did.
12
Mar 9, 2011
Dear KaitlynI am trying to make you happy because I love you / and I don’t have fudge bars, your favorite / and I killed your fish because I forgot to change its water;
7
Feb 6, 2011
wish you were my Januaryyour cheeks rough / from the cold when i brushed them / snow on Monday afternoons, and our numb fingers trying to
4
Jan 19, 2011
Adventures of a Supermarketwe went to the supermarket, / took our cameras to photograph / homogenized colors like the milk
10
Dec 19, 2010
her Pepperoni PizzaWaiting for the subway and talking on the phone with her, he asked: *pepperoni or cheese? You choose.* “Pepperoni would be good,” she said and he hung up. The 7 train arrived, blowing back his hair. The doors opened with a dull beep and he stepped through into the air conditioning. / He sat down in the plastic orange seat, putting his backpack on the floor in between his calves. When he stopped by at their favorite, Franco’s, “Pepperoni or cheese? You choose.” *Pe – Cheese would be good*, he found himself saying. In a strange act of deviousness, he decided it would be a brilliant joke. / At home, she was disappointed when she saw and went to heat up spinach leftovers. As she opened the microwave door and put in the white ceramic bowl, a great sadness came over him, and he only managed to swallow down a few bites before dropping the profane slice back onto his plate.
14
Dec 19, 2010
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