Distancing

Day 1: Throw all these words out of a window.
Day 4: The Sky remains blue, and not to be hugged.
Day 9: Pouring heart out, into sink. Peeling redness.
Day 17: Began counting despite lack of fingers.
Day 25: Began counting all hugs that were missed.
Day 31: Thinking of us Lesbians; and everyone erased.
Day 59: We failed in realizing how nothing comes to pass.
Day 100: Zeroes gaping, curved and sharp, fitting.
Day 219: What if there was no alternative? No vaccine for touch?
Day 370: Began projecting futures off the tips of raised hairs.
Day 541: I’ve tasted wet lips once, long before my lips had hangnails.
Day 712: Numbers, Skies, Zeroes, Hair on my lips and touchy, touching.
Day 713: Nights becomes taut and I didn’t even get to touch them.

Day *11: There is no longer a pandemic that failed to touch everyone.

Day 2*6*: I lost you in writing: you too, were out of the window, out of touch.

Clementi Ave 1

(CW: Suicide References)

The school fence divided a past –
the road between Nan Hua and
NUSH being syllables of us in
tenses. Outside the fence was
bubble tea, and the rest of a future
without it. She walked me to the station.
Before, someone jumped, landing dull.
My heart did flutter on both occasions –
it too, wanted a sky without gravity.
Both times, emotions sank like pearls.
In this timeline, movement was loss:
there went the bubble tea shop, too,
when I moved in to queue. Waiting.
To meet her just to forget her later.
Everyone will forget who jumped, too,
and how I climbed the fence, still
running between syllables, and away.