Self Portrait as a Lover

In 1988, Marina Abramovic and Ulay performed The Lovers, walking from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to meet in the middle and divorce.

When the dragon’s breath calms into the blue tingle of your iris—to the quiet Viridian sky
—then I will find your hands bleeding saltwater and leave them to dry.

—

I disguise myself as a woman in Cassatt’s world—one with her back turned,
only in love with herself, though I know she would never paint me.

—

The women along the wall who hold my hand have skin like daybreak
and touch me as if I’m young & unafraid. They sing in the toilet,

their jaundiced eyes wanting and having
everything in-between.

—

You threw Love out like yesterday’s produce,
as if children lick their fingers of rotten fruit.

—

If this earth ever listened, I’d exchange my pearls for a necklace of raindrops,
but now more than ever, I lose track of which life I am on.

You drew our rolling hills in the dustpan and let me swallow it. How
otherworldly was I then, how romantic.

—

Some days I envy the loveless for the ripe insides of their mouths, how they breathe so easily.
Some days I find my knees trembling as those women sing to me.

—

I once dreamt I could bathe a child without burning myself, but I was
only ever pregnant with every idea of an assemblage of us.

I was only ever alive in the silence of our Citroën van, being kissed with
the strength of a red primrose.

—

I’d like to think there is a place in the ocean where history caves to make room for me
to swim to you. Where our work is done because we have loved hard enough.

—

Why love when it ends like a road sinking into the horizon—
the sky singing me colors I do not want to mix.

—

Happiness was there, like another child I couldn’t
have. Growing now only as a daydream.

—

As if this is the last time I could love,
I run. I stomach poppy until all I see is green,

I clench the human heart as a found object.

Sophia Liu lives in Long Island, New York. Her poems and artwork appear or are forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Rattle, Storm Cellar, Superstition Review, A Velvet Giant, Underblong, and elsewhere. She loves Ziwe and Chicken Shop Date.