Planet Her

She lets me know: she is wrecking herself
right now. On some sheets of a hotel
with a gymrat. Next time, I say, use a condom.
The next time, she asks if my name
is my name. I do not answer. We depend
on whether she would call any form of forgiveness
kind. Lips crackling like salt as I listen, I wonder
if I really can smell her breath heaving
through the phone. And by the time I can see
through the smoke of her friend’s borrowed cigarette,
I imagine it is my reflection at the base of a tin box.
A shard in my neck. Just by seeing its sharpness,
I gag. She did not get any better
or worse, just more her. To search
for her in my memory, I taste an empty
stomach on my tongue. I talk only about the past,
as if we no longer live, I realize. Like how we sang
that song about sex, which I only understood as heart
-break. You could say I am killing a girl
who is already dead. But I once
painted the lack of a face. The dry brush
in my hand did not smooth out the emptiness
nearly enough. The scratches against the canvas,
we barely had enough patience for noise. Still,
she recognized. The loving someone
without remembering, a memory molded
by the reflection of your hands. We are so good
at being parallel to each other, we have not cried
for each other. I do not doubt she has forgotten
the painting, only my movement that looked like freedom.

Chloe Lee is a young poet currently based in Virginia with roots in Seoul and Arizona. Her work has been recognized by YoungArts and the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. She is an alum of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and serves as a reader at Cloudscent Journal.