On Being There

My mind has given up
on the three-act structure.

I pretend this is innovation, unraveling
                        the expected. Mostly it means I am frustrated
                                                 while watching movies

            with family. Tom Hanks prances
                                                                                    across the keys

of the world’s grandest
            piano. My father plucks
                        the remote
                                from my fingers
                        black sheen
                                 prize fish
                        with rubber teeth.
                                    Age-old wisdom—

you may not fast forward.

Matthew Broderick, 1983. Tic-tac-toe
as World War.

I am certain any child
                                                                        I create
                                                               will be one
                                                                   I can’t want.

                         The only winning move
                                    is not to play. I have taken to smothering

                                     each movie ending
            with its plot summary. In fifteen years

I will have gone nowhere
                        like one of Spielberg’s murdered scientists, Alexandria’s ash rising—
my every word unspoken

since high school. How much weight is enough
                                    to press me dry

like a wildflower? We watch Robin Williams
                                                                teeter around the house
                                                                                                in a pink knit

                                                                        with his kids. When my parents are gone, who
                                                                                    will snatch the gun’s dark glow
                                                away?                                      Laugh, the television light
                                                                                    a flame that thaws the hours

out of us? On the day of his best friend’s funeral, Chance
                     rights a fallen tree. Walks the surface of a lake.
                                                In drama I learned how to split my partner
                                    into a second skin, block all our exits.
                                                I never left the scene.

Corinne Leong is an undergraduate writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation and is featured or forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, The Offing, Hobart, and ZYZZYVA.