LIANG CHEN

It’s too hot to sleep. There’s too much light at night. Brains are gumming up because they can’t shut down and get clean. Windows melt in their frames.

I’m in a strange Toyota van driven by a man I have never met. The GPS is in: Korean? Algonquin? Mandarin? We drive down into the growling belly of a hungry beast carrying my most valuable material possessions.

I can’t remember the last time I shut my eyes and saw the music. 

Liang says a kind English word then nothing at all. I imagine us under two miles of glacial ice. Quiet. Thoughtful. Still.

I can remember the last time I said: Please. 
I can remember the last time someone needed me to say: I’m not going to leave you. 

I try to ask Liang a question regarding his childhood, but my voice is spinning with the front axle. 

My eyes fall in love with a cloth house under a bridge, a garbage heap, a small dog. 
My fingers move across my own limbs as though they might wake up, singing in sympathy.

Oh, Liang Chen. If this is the last thing we ever do, 
Let me hold myself up so that you may see my face in the rearview mirror and know that I will never leave you. 

We will only die as bees succumbing to the fragrance of a flower. 

I see that you have been beautiful, cut your hair short, pressed your clothes, driven miles and miles and miles between the stones.