Please Don’t Leave Me Lonely
BY JINGYU LI
—after Claudia Rankine
Ba wanted me to study the stars. There’s a phrase in our language that says each wave pushing higher than the last. Ba gave up rockets & planes to code computers. But he never stopped watching the night sky, the new developments. He could see me up there. We watched the Apollo launches on VCR, the moon landing, his eyes fixed to precision.
*
Outside a space station, Britney dances in a red bodysuit. The Black Eyed Peas sing I got a feeling. Lady Gaga picks up a telephone outside a prison cell. She’s wearing a black sequin bra & matching underwear, curls wrapped around diet coke, everything where it’s not supposed to be. I watch my body change & not change. Ma says it’s not changing enough. She feeds me rice wine because it’s good for my figure. I develop a tolerance to sweets for breakfast.
*
I decide to code computers like Ba & wrap my leaving in gold. I make my parents & grandparents proud. I don’t call. I’m in the fast lane / From L.A. to Tokyo. I go so fast I leave flakes by the sink, next to the new Asian food aisle, underneath the shrimp chips, on the carpet darkened by our bare feet, smudged on the window of the plane that landed early, & after the journey, the bench with the oak leaves, the river with all the ducks.
*
Most of all, I want to be a person. The ones walking with their backs so straight even when they look at the ground their necks are somehow beautiful, the ones who can love someone & let go, to each their own & happily.
*
& the apples are falling & my grandpa is gone & he is a ghost in my phone & an avatar looking brightly from the Skype app & my brother delivers the news & he is young & depressed & looks at me like I’m the rabbit in this world & I think I love him more than anything that could ever touch us.
*
I am still looking for the words to hold the sky with, or for the right way of reaching. Someone says they want to build houses on the moon, someday someone will take the words from our mouths & hang them between gravity & space & every word will become a question & I will still be looking for the right animal & I will still be looking not quite upward but past the spaceship, the aluminum houses, the bowls of fruit preserved to a glory, into the not-quite-there, the not-quite-over & someone will say there, you’ve finally done it now.
