BEST BY: DECEMBER 21ST - Amelia Chang

after taylor swift 

i. you are what you love 

you are my paled lips: two pen flare marks or a pursed lotus or curve of the crescent moon, you

called me a milkflower when you saw me in that dress, purple blush fanned across plump cheeks, naked back and shoulders. you told me i smelled of dragonfruit and poppies, you 

lusted like a man that kisses cherry blossom tattoos to rip them from their skinned branches easier. 

when we broke up then took a break then broke up again, you told me women are like seasons: you want them till you have them & then you mourn what you lost and wait for the next one to arrive. you told me i am the coldest part of winter, mine & your favorite season. “Everyone loves the snow until they have to shovel it,” Tommy told me that men know nothing about women or seasonal décor or sex, that they only care about themselves and having a trophy wife and whether the Bills win the next football game.
 

the coldest day of winter, you walked me to a bench and i felt the stubble of shaven hair on your chin, a thick warble in your throat every time you swallowed. you held the nape of my neck with cold-blooded fingers, refused to wear the woolen gloves i got you because they threatened your masculinity and i looked at your eyes and they were dark and i know that was emblematic of something but i’m not a detective and i never felt your lips on mine. 

ii. you are what you did 

i’d always tell Tommy to shut her face whenever she mentioned your high school sweetheart, stating you were obviously overzealous to smell her lemony hair and that you’d bought her a fake diamond ring before and you’d do it again, but i kept telling Tommy that was a long time ago, you grew up, you aren’t a cheating pimply teenager anymore. 

you told Tommy on day 836 that you and i would get married, that you didn’t care about Cassandra anymore or how much you loved her Egyptian features or her siren eyes that were hypnotizing as moonpools. i asked you what you would do if i was a mermaid and couldn’t speak anymore, and you told me that i’d have paper lungs and you would breathe life into me and watch my ribs rise and fall, give me voice and cradle me to sleep with lullabies about the moon and stars and sheep. 

on my 21st birthday we walked through the door to my parent’s house, the air frostbitten and the wind ending the game of charades we were playing, breaking the rules of keeping silent. you were anything but silent, making cocktails out of raspberry wine coolers while sipping black coffee mid-day like you were on a late night show. my dad loved you, said he could see you as his son, that you reminded him of Tommy when she was younger and you talked to him about the Bills and meeting the quarterback when you went on business to Buffalo, said you got snowed in and had to stay extra nights with a friend named Cassandra and i finally knew then you were always that same teenager. 

iii. you are what you repeat 

a lozenge wrapped in lacy wax paper 

i found it splayed on the kitchen counter, wax paper held the shape but it was crushed to smithereens. BEST BY: DECEMBER 21ST. i’d thrown you the car keys that day, said i had a little tickle in my throat and i needed it fixed. you pushed me onto the kitchen counter and i dug my nails into your back, you said you’d fix the little tickle in my throat and i just laughed and laughed, warm swirls of tongues and lips filling my ears and mouth. 

i go into our medicine cabinet and toss all the lozenges into the trash, and then sit on the floor, watching as the half-eaten apple by the window changes shape everytime the sun moves the shadows. somehow i fish a lozenge out of the trash and pop it into my mouth, sweet & soft & choking, i feel your tongue on my ear, your tongue in my throat, you fill me and i can never breathe again, suddenly i’m underwater & salt stings my irises, clasp pearls swollen inside my cheeks and my pupils grow dimmer & dimmer. 

i lie on the floor and i cry for me and for you, for the way you broke me like a promise, for all your promises, your shit talk of rings and cradles, for the woman you couldn’t love and for the women you never loved. you blew out the last candle that held my eyes together. i bared myself naked for the me that believed you every time, the one that kissed your fingertips and loved all the shortcomings, because she would have died for your sins. i lie and i lie and i wonder if the mermaids that live in the pool, if the ghosts that dance on the porch, are they second-hand embarrassed that i can’t get out of bed because something counterfeit is dead?