Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

by Chen Chen

Your book, with its waiting boat & sea. Your book, a reminder of how much more night I could wade into.

Because I wonder, would my mother do that for me? My mother who once said, If only I never had you. My mother who still can’t say, Your boyfriend. But knowing my mother, I can say she would hold it, even on the news, for everyone to see, because a not-small part of her would rather miss me than listen to me, listen to me say, again, I love him. Drew, what did you say to the unlistening? To the heart that prefers a shineless shirt?

In the refusal of sense, I’m from the cat we agree to call Simon. I’m from his other names. I’m from his future names. I’m from the hunger between his names. I’m from the wet grass he walks through to reach the next house.

You climb back in bed to touch my face. You wrap your arms around me & it’s like you’re the patron saint of touch as well as soft sunlight & soothed dogs. Or you must be the earthly representative of divine holding. Or you’re both & also a boy, like me, holding on.

this future walks, unpersonifiable, because what, who is a person in these windows, now

My song wants to say, I know I haven’t called, say, I’m still angry, but should call. My song is trying to tell my brothers, I’m angry, but not with you, you who last December gave me the gift of a shrug, of saying, That’s great when I told you about the man I love. My song is the way we jumped right back to a brutal round of Uno & I was too bowled over by the two of you to even try saving myself. Or to tell you that my song was, for years, Dad’s Never tell any other family, Mom’s Never tell your brothers.

I mean, why did your name for me also have to be SoBrave&Strong, why not just Loved?

Winter, in a word that means shield & shattered, roof & rain, a love that hurts to give, receive. Have I wanted to hurt you back? Did my poems hurt you? Do I want these words to wound?

I remember you drove us home. The radio was on. We made a sound like a lid coming off.

I said, Thank God without believing in thanks.