When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

by Chen Chen

The sun sets like a new regret like a flute I am learning to play & I’m bad at it. Progress is slow.

Will I just have to make room? Do I have any left?

try to build a bridge to my parents but only reach my mother & it’s a bridge she’s about to jump off of. I

Think of peace & how the Buddhists say it is found through silence. Think of silence & how Audre Lorde says it will not protect you.

I am too much statuary in not enough city.

Your smile in the dreaming dark is an umbrella for all the going, gone, & yet to come.

tried to ask my parents to leave the room, but not my life. It was very hard. Because the room was the size of my life. Because

For he looks happy & doesn’t know I’m looking & that makes his happiness free.

I want the journey to be long. & strange, like a map drawn in snow by our shadows shivering. I want to shiver against you, into you.