Anny Tang

I’m not good with poetry

I’m not good with poetry, or finding meaning in the mundane. I don’t see constellations in your freckles or hear the ocean in your ribcage when I sleep on your chest. Your heartbeat is just that – a metronome of breaths. And your hands have played at Carnegie but they don’t strum my spine like an ivory harp and your teardrops don’t spot my skin like a Braille love note.

I’m not good with poetry, or realizing how a silence can be sad. What do you mean, I need to read between the lines? Am I supposed to notice how you tremble like a seismograph? How your limbs are folded like origami as if tucking yourself away?

I’m not good with poetry, or perhaps loving you. You’re curled up like a question mark on my bed, and I calculate the mathematical probability of us staying together before bringing myself to answer. You tell me about how you saw a cloud today that looked lonely and I scoff, but clutch you closer. Reminding myself that clouds are just clouds, and not a metaphor. And goodbyes are just goodbyes.