can you tell i’m a
virgo, the last immortal
to abandon the earth,
kept by some golden
complex that held her
hands outstretched from
ten paces back? she
whispers “beloved”
to every grain of sand,
to each crest and tidal
want—in other words—
to no one in particular:
her pacing on the beach,
waves lapping against
the shore, the sun moving
on to more interesting
audiences, dragging one
long shadow out from
under her and toppling
her into the night.
who invited her here,
let her into the house party,
all smiling and lonely,
quipping about the end
of days as the subwoofer
starts, gooey light dripping
from the stove hood? who
does she think she is,
nibbling on spears of
celery in the corner, who
probably thinks she’s too
good to taste salt
on the dance floor, too
sanctified to vomit the
poison out into the
kitchen sink, to let a
friend gently hold
back her hair?
she samples the gravity
with a finger, a swirl of
the cosmos and her
cocktail, toying with that
force that pulls everything
together. there it is,
humming between the new
couple slung over the
high stools or the loose
huddle of old classmates
keeping each other in
polite orbit, a dark nebula
of unsaid connection and
slicked viscous near-misses
adrift in a gas of malt
fumes, cologne. but
her calculus is always a
bit off, she curses under
her breath—if only she
had an intuition for such
things—always veering
too far or embarrassingly
close and desperate to
correct course, with every
embrace a pause and a
recalibration of pressure,
idle conversation turning
onto itself in slow circles
around a dying star.
the dimmed morning
astros twinkle with a pale
fantasy, of endless care
crossing infinite space—
she muses, wandering a
lucid tandem gait down
the hollow street, bones
hollow too as if shedding
their substance, nearly
believing the breeze is
lifting her off in alien
defiance of newton’s
laws, languid somersaults
in atmosphere. a deep
sigh deflates her, serene
and troubled:
well,
it didn’t make me any sharper,
being alone—nor freer, nor
bolder, or anything it should’ve,
all tired charms and holy water.
but what’s funny about waiting
for sunrise is that, really, the
sun has never really left us at
all, like, can you feel it, how
it’s hugging the earth, from
even below the horizon?
yeah,
there it is.
Tyler Lian is an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
