From Yesterday

Sophia Shan

It begins on the living room floor

you lie on the slightly damp carpet

And stare at nothing

If you look back

that seems to be the one thing you did

over the summer

 

These days slip out of your grasp

and clink like river pebbles on the hard ground

Because as you’re walking down a road with your foster dog

that you’ll have to return sometime

you saw these red vines hanging on a stone wall

with nothing, no stems to hold them there

and it didn’t seem odd

 

It might have started with your sleep phases waxing

you went to bed after the city lights woke up

and couldn’t tell when you fell asleep

It felt like you were excited when,

another soul, Septimius Smith,

reached out from the pages of Mrs. Dalloway

leveraged a picket into your heart

 

You can both acknowledge that

the empty void of feeling could blow a typhoon through your soul

and leave it looking untouched

But that is what all the edgy teenagers say

Someone placed you, the guinea pig,

in a plastic foam box carved into an irregular shape

it would only hold once,

left empty

and in the dense maddening blankness of the white walls

if you blinked or concentrated

 

you would see beauty and success and talent

blended together like vomit

Only when you saw the rainwater come up in a spray

around the car wheels—

a rare display of beauty

you felt like marking it:

No, I’m not empty, I’m unhappy

It’s in the endless folding of cranes

and turning off all the food vlogs you loved

and your new appreciation for Billie Eilish

 

You even thought of divvying up however much wealth you had

but who would have your best, unlovable possessions?

And none of this quite scares you except for

what comes next, not quite a headache,

more like a screaming black-out

 

If you cease to imagine your future, is it still there?

As you bring yourself to the surface for another breath

your hopes and wishes and thoughts

melt back into the boiling water

Leaving in your small, heaving hand

A burning lump of God’s sacred life

Even if you find

the only joy you can peel off the bottom of a chair

is chewed and stretched-out

the world and everyone are waiting around you

and you are right here…