I still can’t bear to wipe away the tears and constellations you painted across my face
All I see in the mirror is the unfinished painting you made of me:
Untitled
Sleep
The best sleep is the kind you sneak away with
My illicit affair
She creeps up from behind and surprises me
I’m stolen, surrendered
Like a guilty pleasure
I crave her for a few more minutes when she’s here
But she leaves in a hurry and me in regret
I never know how long she’ll be—
minutes, hours, a day?
Stay!
Waiting
My unwilling companion
at the train,
the bus,
in my inbox,
or by the phone
or by the door
A loud sort of
Anticipation!
Enveloping like
waves on an abandoned sand castle
Pacing back and forth between
the halls of dread and eagerness
quivering, shaking like
windy roads in the twilight hills
Let me go!
Memory
I met Memory at a garage sale. He was a kind-looking old man with glasses and a moustache that curled at different angles on each side. He was moving away, he said, and it seemed he was selling whatever he could.
Everything must go!
Mickey Mouse watch, stopped at 3:11 – $5
Empty picture frame – $10
Still life of a set dining table – $5 ($2 extra for the frame)
Fake cactus – $5
8” x 10” used canvas (painted over with white) – $15
Unused planner – $3
Padlock (missing key) – $1
DVD player – $20
Black and white friendship bracelet – $3
On an impulse, I bought the Mickey Mouse watch and the planner. There was a table with a box for going-away notes. I ripped out a page from my new planner and scribbled.
Dear Memory,
You promise you’ll stay with me forever
But you quietly slip away from my turned back
Little by little, then altogether
Ajax Fu ’28 (ajaxfu@college.harvard.edu) finds it easy to sleep, hard to wait, and impossible to remember.