The Passage Of Something, Especially Time

I stand on the precipice between this day and the next, and I weigh the pros and cons of it all—of this day, of this lifetime, of the way my skin feels paper-thin under pale purple moonlight.

But everything seems to be that fragile, that inescapably visceral, that precariously balanced on fine lines. Everything is felt not with lightness, but completely, from within the tissue of my body.

It is no matter—my mind is busy building sandcastles.

I am sick with unbridled infatuation for people with a penchant for behaving in ways that disgust me, for ephemeral seconds where gut-wrenching confessions don’t matter, for sweetness that turns rotten when neglected.

I become origami, folding over and over myself in the ceaseless search for forgiveness, apologies, unfrayed endings; I become a cracked vase, a loop of emptiness.

I become untied. I stand on that precipice. I wait for revelation, for a prodigious shift, for the light to hit me in a way that will uncover something I never knew--but it never does. The sun always kisses the hot pink horizon into nothingness and reappears burning red from humiliation.

And I always end up on the other side, and the other side always becomes this side once again.

And all I can think about are sandcastles on the shore, shrinking until there’s nothing left—not even the hands that molded them.

Cover art: Dabin Ahn