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

by Chen Chen

It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I’m not a religious person. I thought I’d made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings.

Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons.

I had scaled this old “safe” tree with my running shoes, planning to run away—if not far away enough, then for long away enough

Seeing you run so beautifully on the track that afternoon, I wanted you to suffocate, breath-starved from all the miles you’d run away from me.

a kind of kiss I think every single dead person in every part of the world must crave with violent impossibility.

I’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time fall completely apart & everyone just says, It’s raining, & someone might even bring cats & dogs into it, no one says, Stop being so dramatic or You should see a professional.

I 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 run to her, she jumps, she’s swimming, saying, Finally I’ve learned—all this time, trying to get from one useless chunk of land to another, when I should’ve stayed in the water.

I am knowledgeable in advanced aftermath.

When did I first realize my parents were not infinite? That I could see the end of them?

Why can’t you see me? Why can’t I stop needing you to see me? For someone who looks like you to look at me,

I want to be the Anti-Sisyphus, in love with repetition, in love, in love. Foolish repetition, wise repetition.

I wish I could feel your warmth, as easily as I feel his. But I don’t. I feel fear. I hear fear telling me I’m a body, that’s all. & the boy I love is a body. & bodies die. No other world, no return to this world in another form. (Annihilation.) It isn’t that I didn’t think these were the facts before. It’s that now, he’s here. I have to try harder. Believe the facts could be at least a little wrong. Please, something. Some magic, real as this ripe life with him.

Does your mother love you all the time? Have you ever doubted?