Of late, I have fallen for letters. All the silences and years can be sealed and reopened in a single breath. The separation that will not be named until closed in your hand.
The Greeks called their trees the house of gods, how little we’ve changed since then: cutting paper late in the night, its rough edges smoothed and folded, expecting to hold all the particulars of life.
I remember a concert I attended years ago. Couldn’t see anything except the cellist whose bow chafed against the strings as if it was kissing off, inch by inch, the clasps of light.
It is never the music but the making that breaks me
The only handiwork I am ever good at is this. I still let the lines keep me from falling. I still like little hot rooms pressing my body on yours palm that wants to unfold like walls the post office on Sunday mornings those envelopes I carry unsent. Instead, I drive and think how Freud distinguishes mourning from melancholia: unmastered grief, a loss resisting closing. We do not write for the dead. We write to them
Shiyang Su (she/her/hers) is a Chinese poet and an undergrad at UChicago. Her other poems can be found or are forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, SWWIM, Rattle, Passages North, Diode Poetry Journal, Shō Poetry Journal, Gigantic Sequins, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She was nominated for Best New Poets.
