Conjugate - Jiahan Tang

Canto I. Good Things 

We begin with a stranger’s wedding. You deign to drink, and I am helpless but to follow. But I am troubled, too. Trembling, because boys don’t like a drunk girl the way you think they do. Boys like a tipsy girl, nectar-sweet: her hand soft and searching, not death-still. I know this because I have been with boys. I have been with more boys than you can fathom. They like my voice, my height. They like the way I wear band tees and know the band. It’s not much, I say. I just like to know things. I derive joy from knowledge, because I’d like to be known, too. 

Now, you’re land-locked at the table. You have attracted an impressive crowd. They (read: a dozen cynics, who’d like to see you lose a drinking game) crane upwards, bubbling and boundaryless. One offers a knife and you beam at them. I could not tell you who. The room is dark enough to dim heaven, its faces mere petals on a bough—so I’m a bit blind. A bit sick. And I’m further than I’d like, but there’s no room blood-close to you: you are, as always, amidst those who know nothing of your grin and overgrown bangs, your heart and judicious hands. I know you, though. I know how you nearly failed your midterms. I know how you bite your nails and blame it on your appetite. I know how your lashes collect: in clumps, like starlings huddled on a powerline. Now, you clasp the knife and I see it flash like teeth. I worry. Then—it’s gone. Heat lightning. You splay your hands and I sense the soft webbing between my fingers ache. Phantom pains of a foreign body. 

I promise I want to help you. I want to free you from the fate that awaits at the end of this evening, the end of elysium. Take me. Take me, too. Take me with you. I’m so drunk.

*** 

Canto II. The Honeymoon 

We wait in the hospital, hands locked into lilac sprigs. You do not know, but it is four in the morning; you do not know, but I am prepared to call out of work tomorrow. The flu, a nurse hums. It’s headed around. Many such cases, so I name one my own. I stare as you scroll on your phone, one-handed. There is a bloodied bandage on the other, which you elevate once I insist. Does a knife cut require stitches? Will you need them? Will it matter? You don’t seem to think so. You don’t seem to care. Yet I care. My scarf binds your injury, circling your wrist: another address steeped in blood. So let me be bloodless: I care. I resent. I care. I resent that I care that I resent that I—I am your best friend. What I have of you is enough. 

The receptionist waves us over. The doctor is in, she says. He possesses cures for all illnesses: doubt, bloodwork, lost affections. I wonder what kinds of people they’ve plagued. Has someone swung a dagger at him before? Has a patient tugged at his freckled throat? Fingerprints manifest on my own neck, soft and sun-blistered. Someone is strangling the reason out of me. Perhaps it’s this place, this waiting room witness to repulsive habits. I claw at my knees and resist the urge to cry. 

Later, I wait in the lobby because I cannot bear this sight: you swaying on the hospital bed, legs long as my lifeline. You fling your bandage towards me, teasing. I take it and ask where you’ve hid my scarf, but you say you cannot recall. I sigh, striding right into your room. I slide open the wastebin, where I spot it, elbow-deep: my scarf, soul-torn by scissors. 

Hey! the doctor howls. He sees me as a plus-one to your pain. He sees us as an anomaly, the real disease. He calls security to pry me away, but I do not care. I have my scarf, and I can sense your fear on it: the fear of bleeding out by the smallest cut. So much blood for such a little creature. 

You are my little creature. You are my baby. Baby, I love you. I love you so much I could be wheeled onto the table for heart surgery. 

*** 

Canto III. Forever Wrestling Angels 

That evening, I dream of you. You speak like a soldier. You pick me up and we fuse, collision-pink; your palm melds into my ribs, slow and marrow-deep. I become a dying star, gnawing the remains of your arm. You laugh and say you’d desert the post for me. Later, you scrap the post. You simply say you’d desert me. 

I wake, soft and shaky-limbed. I dial you instead of the hospital. 

You pick up, chastising me over static. You ask if I’ve checked the time. I have. Again, it is four in the morning. In Mandarin, sì diǎn zhōng: sì like sǐ, so it becomes death o’ clock. I apologize and you laugh, unfazed. It’s death o’ clock, you quip. Did you dream of me or what? 

I hesitate, then hang up, having spotted a cicada by my bed. I hear it bleat into indigo and think of dying, of being discovered by you. Face down, organs unspooled: the kind of roadkill love makes of distractions. 

You wouldn’t be distracted. You wouldn’t bother with an autopsy. You’d ask: what is there to examine? Cause of death: us? What does it mean, ‘between us’? Who’s us? I’m not like h—like that. I couldn’t be like that. 

That’s not right. 

You’d send freesias, and the bouquet would wither on my doorstep. There would be a trickling where the petals once lay. Some would assume it’s you, bleeding for me. I would assume you purposefully dirtied my doorstep. 

*** 

Canto IV. I Glow Opalescent 

A week later, I come over to check on your stitches. You laugh, cloaking my fists with your hands; your palms are peach-soft, now patched to perfection. I want to cry and confess that I love you, but nothing gives. I am led up to your floor and then into your home. I take off my shoes and ask if this will take long. You smile and I scale it, then slice myself on the sickle. You smile and say you want to, but you are not kissing me. 

I circle your wrists with my hands and ask: what do you want? I wait. I wait, idle and grow apocalypse-old—but you do not kiss me. You are still not kissing me. Perhaps my life achieved entropy the minute I met you. You have atrophied my faculties. You have shackled me to the table. Each morning, at four, you claw open my heart. It heals and you do it all over again: the eagle to my Prometheus, doomed because I dared.

*

That evening, I dream of us. We are slow-dancing under a civilized light. I let you lead. I learn that a girl is permitted to dance—so long as desire is deniable, and she steps away with a man. Now, you step away and— 

*

—onto my toes. You clasp my neck, wound-warm. You invite me to stay; I almost say yes. We’ll live forever and nothing will change. 

*** 

Canto V. Headless Horse**man 

I am dating a boy. He likes my haircut, my outfits that you failed to compliment. He kisses me in the darkness of drive-in movies. After, I slip into bed and rewind the tapes. In them, I find you. I wonder if and how you would’ve done the same. I wonder if you’ll ever regret it. How you’ll lose your better half. If you’ll feign, but never feel whole. 

How you’ll die alone, of a cleaving softer than closure.