You promised me a forever. I tried so hard to not let myself believe in that forever you painted for me. I knew one day you’d leave like all the rest and I knew that when you did, it’d hurt me like all the others. But maybe I haven’t been hurt enough, or maybe you meant too much to me, because I believed you like the fool I am.

I believed in that forever where we’d still have a place in each others’ lives. One where we’d still meet up and text and talk to each other. One where we’d still keep in touch, as if we weren’t going to entirely separate schools 382 miles away from one another.

You gave me hope that it wouldn’t end like all the others. Where I wouldn’t be waiting, always waiting, always hoping that you would still want to stay my friend. And I was bracing myself for that ending, because you meant the world to me, you still do. You meant so much to me and it hurts knowing that I didn’t mean as much to you. It hurts knowing that I simply cared for you more than you cared for me.

I let myself hope for a single second that you’d keep your promise. And just as I began to believe in it, just as I began to open my heart, just as I began to envision a future where the two of us were still friends, you broke your promise.

Because now I’m waiting for texts from you, whole days passing in between our messages. Now when I reply, it’s like you don’t want to be a part of the conversation. Now it’s like you’re forcing yourself to be my friend. And I have to wonder, what did this friendship mean to you? Because if it’s that easy for you to walk away from it, the laughs, the smiles, the fond memories, then maybe it simply meant nothing to you. Maybe you aren’t the person I believed you to be.

It hurts. I’m not going to lie, it hurts so incredibly much. Because now I’m left wondering if maybe I did something wrong. I’m left asking myself if you even still care for me as you once did. I’m left grasping at the question of whether we’re still friends or not. I knew it would destroy me, and that’s why I didn’t want to let myself believe in a future where we were still friends. And yet, you made me believe and I fell for those sweet lies, drunk on that taste of forever.

I wanted you to be a part of my life, I wanted you to keep having a place in my future. But I guess you didn’t think of me the same. I guess you were ready to say goodbye sooner than I was.

But do you know what hurts more?

Knowing that you hurt me and still holding onto you. Because I’m still waiting, I’m still hoping, I’m still letting myself believe. You put that knife through my heart, but I’m the one twisting it deeper inside.

I can understand you wanting to end it. But if you’re going to do it, then please just do it. Please just cut me off, because it’ll be easier that way. It’ll be easier for me to grieve, for me to mourn, for me to begin to heal.

Their family reunion is abruptly set into motion by Ba’s death.

The last one was for a wedding—Shi Jinghui’s, actually—which ended sourly in divorce, so their track record for good moods and family bonding is clearly superb.

Shi Jinghui scrunches his nose in mild disgust as a film of dust implodes into the air of his father’s office. He waves his hand quietly in front of his face to avoid the debris.

They probably weren’t poisonous spores. Probably. Considering his father, it was a very real possibility.

/He always did say we’d be dead if we stepped in here alone/, Shi Jinghui thinks sardonically to himself. He sighs, tucking his face further into his cardigan. /Maybe some things never change./

“Old man really must have kicked the bucket if you’re in here,” a unsubtly delighted voice says from behind him. Shi Jinghui doesn’t have to turn to see the newcomer, closing his eyes instead and letting out a quiet huff of amusement.

Zhang Yuting lounges into the room, barely sidestepping a precious artifact from Egypt that had been so carefully maintained on their father’s private bookshelf. Shi Jinghui watches him silently from his perch on the desk as his adoptive brother languidly tosses various items onto the teakwood floor in a silent inspection.

“I reassure you, he’s rolling over in his grave,” Shi Jinghui answers. “If that’s your intention.”

“He’s too busy playing poker with Stalin to care,” Zhang Yuting says. He pauses, then fully turns to Shi Jinghui with an eyebrow raised. “Was the mothering personality triggered by coming back here, or are you still like this all the time?”

“Ha-ha.” Shi Jinghui deadpans. He opens his arms to the other man, who lets out an amused breath and obliges to step in and receive a brief hug. “Still blunt and charming as ever, aren’t you.”

“Things from the Academy hardly change,” Zhang Yuting says, stepping back to lean against the windowsill. He lets out a deep sigh, scanning the room with narrowed eyes. Shi Jinghui recognizes the bitter nostalgia in his gaze—the resigned disdain, the numb disbelief. He wonders if the others will think to head to the same forbidden room.

Or if they’ll even decide to come at all.

After several moment of heavy silence, deafening with the buzz of both of their minds flitting through memories a decade ago, a creak sounds from the doorway. Shi Jinghui turns to look back—then jolts to himself at the sight of the figure standing with his hands in his pockets.

“Room for another in this party?” Cheng Bowen drawls icily. Shi Jinghui watches as Zhang Yuting instantly tenses from his spot, his posture tightening from his loose draping over the windowsill into something more reminiscent of a fighter preparing for a next round.

He can’t say he blames him.

When neither of them answer, their brother raises an eyebrow.

“No,” Zhang Yuting says at the same time Shi Jinghui answers, “Three isn’t too much of a crowd, is it?”

Cheng Bowen’s eyes gleam in thinly veiled amusement at this as Zhang Yuting turns to Shi Jinghui with a displeased glare. Shi Jinghui elects to ignore him, instead turning away to pick at his nails in forced nonchalance.

Zhang Yuting lets out a resigned breath, then turns back with a steely look to Cheng Bowen, who tilts his head.

“Then I’ll just let you two … catch up,” he says tightly, rising from his spot. He gently touches a hand to Shi Jinghui’s side in parting before he levels Cheng Bowen with another irritated glance, taking his leave and leaving behind an awkward air.

Shi Jinghui doesn’t know if he imagines the softening in Cheng Bowen’s expression. If it’s just selective perception. After all these years—he’d like to think—well. Nobody in their family’s ever been good at reading each other. Much less Cheng Bowen.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Shi Jinghui offers into the silence.

“Neither did I,” the other man answers. No elaboration.

Shi Jinghui hums at that. He doesn’t know what else to say, despite the incredulity of the occasion—always the mediator, and never his own voice when it came to his family. Even though his siblings would disapprove of this conversation itself.

“Where’s Xixi and Gu Kang?” Cheng Bowen asks. His face, his tone—reveal nothing about his feelings on the topic, even as Shi Jinghui’s hands ball into fists on the desk.

“ … Gu Kang,” Shi Jinghui answers, letting out a weary breath as he crosses his arms, “filed for divorce eight months ago. And Xixi, I—he got custody. So.”

Cheng Bowen mouth curves downwards at this.

“But anyways,” Shi Jinghui says stiffly, hopping gently off the edge of the desk. “That’s neither here nor there. I hope you’ve been—well. With your … job. I suppose.”

///

In another room, the family’s mansion’s housekeeper—their android of many years—dusts the wall next to a dimly lit oil painting in the likeness of a young girl poised on a velvet chair, the right side of her mouth quirked upwards.

The girl in the painting above the fireplace, with a shock of bone-white hair against a sanguine background, does not answer to Yan Siyuan’s hums as she dusts.

She had the face of a wax model made for someone else, the second draft that was almost there but missing something crucial. Was it emotion? Imperfection? She had the face of something otherworldly, one that you couldn’t fault but couldn’t love, no matter how long you looked.

The sky was overcast as she made her way down to the mailbox. It looked like it should’ve been humid and warm, but it was cold: the aesthetics of June set in the reality of a Long Island February. She had grown up in this weather, having stomped and galloped and trudged on this same path to the mailbox every day for the better half of seventeen years. She supposed it felt different today because she knew she wasn’t coming back tomorrow. Sure, there was winter break and next summer and next year’s winter break, but that was different. This was only home for a few more hours.

All her life, she had blamed her unloveable face on the eyes that perceived, on the size of her hometown and the fact that the boys here had colorblindness to anything that wasn’t blonde or blue. She had worked herself to the bone, excelling in every sector that wasn’t romantic attention, all with the steadfast conviction that it would pay off, that someday she would feel worthy. But standing at the mailbox, staring into its emptiness, she felt the first trickle of doubt that the world was small, that the same eyes existed in every face, and that hers would always only look that way. It was Sunday. She was leaving tomorrow.

everyone always thinks i’m talking about god.

i’m starting to think his image is just too similar to flower’s,

form too invigoratingly passionate and

i just don’t know what i believe in sometimes so

i’m screaming about hands gripping

plasma membrane screens like toddlers trying to keep safe,

the phantom press of her body leaning into mine.

whispers “this is what i’m here for.”

watching hair fall staticy onto the back of her

abyss colored sweater and how her high top 

laces have to wrap around her ankles to keep her in her shoes.

i ask flowerpower if she believes in anything external

and she says yes, love, but she doesn’t say what it is.

we’re digging through storage bins at her dad’s place

looking for posterboards. thirty-one out and icy.

we don’t want to walk to the store.

i ask flowerpower what the bloody hell she’s even doing,

what science project is worth this much trouble,

not just accepting a fail and moving on and

you already got into college; i ask flowerpower

what she’ll even report on this late.

her perfume smells like frustration and the density of hollister

polos, how you wait for them to cut off blood flow to your chest like

seeing your best friend in a jessica rabbit costume on halloween, but 

everything around us is science, she says. 

she points to a spider on the wall and i back up.

it is science. i am science. you and me and the spider and the ocean 

are equals

and that’s pretty encapsulating too. if that’s all there was i’d believe in

things so much easier, wouldn’t you?

flowerpower does her project on the lid of a

rubbermaid and says that’s the grittiness of being nowhere…

the way we’d walk for miles in summer and be in the same town, the way we’re

trying on each others clothes and the vulnerable practice of

cinching and swallowing and disagreeing on who’s who in it. 

letting her tags brand me with each letter

spelling out on my flesh: i am your best

friend. this is my memoir of loving things deeply and leaving them,

prying pasts like leeches.

flowerpower comes home three weeks later with a c+ and

cusses loudly like a god that no teacher would care that the project filled her.

she grabs me and swings us around on the breaking wooden porch 

letting it dig into my feet. ground me, i want to plead.

let me be grounded. let me stay.

she points to the ocean. you see that? 

you see it?

you know it’s all there is?

1: i knew the stars, once.

before city lights swallowed the last of the starlight and spit out a black, black sky

a sky that beckoned and beguiled until I became one with its shadow

i can hardly recall the stars, anymore; hardly recall anything but the darkness that swallowed me whole

5: i see the constellations in dreams, withered and weaving their way into my consciousness

I wonder how a memory of beauty can exist among the ruins of destruction.

and so Memory Lane has become a wasteland of dying stars and long-forgotten dreams

how i wish time could be turned back to those shooting stars once more

the visions of stars, though bright, are faded and blurry inside my head, and i know they would not accept me anymore

10: and yet, and yet. here i stand, arms open and eyes unraveled.

welcome to another poem written by us! i cannot believe how long it took me to get around to posting this but thank you so much to everyone who participated!! much love to you all, tagged in the comments < 3

It snowed, heavy. The kind of snow that covers the earth and leaves roads slick and me wondering if summer has ever actually happened and if it will ever happen again. I am a summer person. I tell this to my friends and family; I live by the beach, I am a summer person. Cause and effect. I wasn’t born here but the water, it’s so encompassing. Despite my attempts to meander into fall or spring, this life, this town, that godforsaken warm weather season has seeped into my veins.

My beach is a dirty beach. Last summer the sand was covered in cicadas, littered like clothes on a bedroom floor. When they all washed away, it was still dirty. The scents of sex and day-old perfume linger in the air all seasons. The water is filled with sewage and assorted waste from the nuclear plant down the street. Warnings are posted on every tree to "swim at your own risk" and I always swear I’ll never go in but still somehow I find myself wading up to my shoulders on a rare July day when it’s too hot to do anything else. I like to go so far out that I’m only a little blip of light, that the water soaks through the cutoff patterns of my jean shorts, curling them up and tattooing them onto my skin. I always have a farmer's tan in summer, no matter how consciously I try not to. That water is frozen over now and the path is unshoveled. I feel oppressed. I feel safe. I want to go back and keep inching toward the sun.

I had a teacher once who said I burned like a Southern girl’s first winter North. I think about her constantly, about those words and how my state won’t get claimed by the North or the South, how nobody wants the middle. Because of this, I have spent the eighteen years of my life trying to sway to one side of things, trying to corral myself. I am a summer person. I walk towards the big star. I wonder if when my old teacher looks up, she remembers me. My family listens to my findings and they tell me to go outside, clear my head for a while. The snow is fun, they say. I remember I am three in a family of five. A perfect middle. Passion, my teacher told me, is a burning that takes the shape of ice.

So: it snowed, heavy, and will snow again in a day, but while the roofs on my street melt into the first drops of this season’s baywater, I will at least try. I go out, letting the shoveled piles swallow me up. Farther, farther into the distance and suddenly I am nothing but a tiny blip. The snow melts through my leggings, freezing them onto my legs, and I think about what it might take to crawl out of this perfect dragging rhythm I have. Would anyone really notice? Would anyone really care?

decembers are the hardest of all.

often i lie down on my back

and let my blood turn cold let my blood

freeze to death.

i've never been less content or more lonely-

there are no more beautiful things.

sometimes i cannot seethe at my misery.

sometimes i look at you and my heart gets so full

sometimes you look back and i crumble down

like dust.

my fingers ache for a touch of your skin.

my heart longs to be loved back.

the winter air smells like cheap old mattresses and

stale death. i cut my wrists and bleed out red

red christmas.

i look inside my throat and claw out veins in disgust.

in the night

sometimes i dream of cradling you in my arms

sometimes i wake up and cry.

(is this what Yeats said was love? that bastard)

love is a laughable thought and yet

i write in the dark on yellow dog-eared pages hoping

love will find me hidden away

in the folds of your flesh one day.

(trivial, trivial

words are blasphemous when love is god)

sometimes I smile quietly at you

sometimes you smile back and slowly,

slowly i break down into tiny little pieces-

digestible, (and perhaps slightly) loveable.

(Yeats always did know what he was talking about.

that bastard)

I've built my whole life around constructs. I know this because on Saturday, I wore my first crop top for senior pictures and told myself this is momentous. I paired it with black jeans and a blazer and waited for someone in my immediate family to call me the w word but they didn't. All I got was a tense and silent ride to a beach I could have walked to anyway. My aunt does call me a republican though, and I think about that a lot. I am not that. I am not a republican. Sometimes, however, I am that word, the w one. I’ve given up trying to reclaim that word, so it sticks to me like a scarlet letter, the reason I can’t babysit the board members’ kids. Blame it on my blatant disregard of the fingertip rule that started when I was twelve, blame it on my love of beautiful things, but I think it’s just that fundamental wrongness people seem to find in me and my mind and my age. Sometimes, by the way, I am that. Sometimes I am my age, I am eighteen. Sometimes I wear beautiful clothes and look sophisticated, sometimes I do normal things like get senior pictures taken and wonder if I’m beautiful. I eat soft serve ice cream with my best friend and her mother who is an almost famous photographer and talk about my town and the weird names I give to places. I have a magic fridge store. I have a stab station. I have a crop top.

My second outfit was a short plaid skirt and a t-shirt and tights. I got home and was looked at like an alien. Sometimes I am fourteen again, looking into windows that I can afford but not buy from in a shop in a city that’s been “shrouded in sin” since before my conception. I was taken to the city when I turned fourteen. My mom thought I’d hate it but I didn’t. So sometimes I am that, sometimes I’m generally disappointing as a person. It is so hard to live in my body, in my world. You didn’t hear that from me, but oh my God, please believe it. It’s so hard.

And my senior pictures are probably amazing, they are probably masterfully taken and edited and I am so lucky that I know someone who is so good at capturing things. I can’t help but ask myself though--when I see them will I know who she captured? I never recognize myself in pictures. I’ve always seemed to go missing. I am not myself trying to be the person my parents want me to be. I don’t know how to be myself in the things I do alone. When I get home, I get yelled at for spending money on photographs of myself and I am a narcissist because I can look at myself preserved like that for a period of time and two hours later, someone slips a brownie under my door but I don’t eat it and I don’t come outside. I know it isn’t the killer, it’s just the one who left and came back. They always come back, don’t they? I go for a walk around midnight and don’t take my phone.

On Sunday I’m not eighteen or beautiful. I wake up in the clothes I went out in and don’t change out of them and my mother is still back but she’s hiding and my father is working to afford something that won’t complete him and I begin to wonder if Saturday even happened. But it did. My friend is back at college and I know this because she texts differently at college then she does when she’s home. My brother says he is starving to death and there’s no food in the house. God damn it!, I want to shout and I want to leave but I don’t because he’s a kid and my sister’s a kid and I’m not, so I fish a flannel out of my closet and send them to friends’ houses to beg for snacks while I walk to the store. It is the only moment I will ever get to be alone. I buy bread and apples and fill out the FAFSA on my phone in the frozen dinners aisle. Sometimes I am thirty-six and doing this, most days I am thirty-six and I have a twelve and ten year old and I am dying of some unknown disease that turns out your insides and wrinkles up your face prematurely. I have done absolutely nothing productive since the summer and I will probably never be selfish like that again.

The cashier flirts with me and makes obscure references to my shirt. I say “how are you?” and he says “it’s another day in paradise.” And he says this to probably everyone who asks, but I want him to know I’m in love with him because he said it to me. I want to ask him how he got over not being the person he wanted. I want to ask him if maybe we can hang out. But he is eighteen and I don’t remember that I’m not actually thirty-six. I wonder if he has only ever been one age or if he doesn’t believe in constructs. I want to scream ARE YOU LIKE ME but I don’t want to scare people so I leave. A boy scout walks up to me and begs me to buy popcorn so he can go camping. He is freezing and alone and four and I am freezing and alone and aging rapidly and I’m so damn done so I overdraft for him. I wonder if this is how it is, if I will always be this terrible product of what I’ve come from. I wonder if my skin will fall off before I stop giving myself up for people. I get home and the kids aren’t back yet so I let myself stand in the shower for fifteen minutes and I pull on my crop top again and run my hands through my hair, wishing I’d preserved the curls I had earlier for just a little extra time. I wonder if it’s okay to miss so much you’ve never had. I wonder if it ever goes away.