June Lin
Gate 65
That shaken martini feeling in your stomach.
Twenty-dollar sundress around your hips.
You put on new earrings yesterday in a bid to make yourself older
and the customs officer still asked why you were alone.
Eighteen and airborne, you play the child
when it conveniences you. You struggle
with your suitcase and wait for someone to lift it.
Nobody comes. You catch it yourself,
hand on hard shell, and let the wheels roll
lanes into the carpet.
Walking past the duty-free zone,
you consider the loneliness
of closing hours.
Shutters out, lights down. Holding nobody’s hand.
You walk out the airport and into the humid, sweating night.
I want to take you and drive
Our hearts into the ground.
I want to crash, want it to feel
like popping a joint. The crack
of an index finger, first knuckle from the palm.
N, I’m sitting at the drive-in theatre listening to you.
The long tone of a voicemail. The fading laughter
of a worn-out VHS tape. Have you ever climbed
a tree you knew you couldn’t come down from.
Have you ever tried the jump anyway.
N, I want you to pretend to be 14 again.
Would you fuck your knees for me one more time,
knowing what it’ll do to you
ten years down the line?
Out Tonight
Backless top. Half a midriff.
Sweeping lights, then a flash of a hand.
I would get a lobotomy to stop thinking about you,
but I couldn’t afford one, so this
was the next best thing. I tucked three shots
of watermelon vodka away in a row –
three gasping gulps, nothing spilled –
before I got here. What would it take to be caught
and held? A vodka cranberry? Six feet and a few inches
to spare? Proximity to power, to privilege, to teenage popularity,
a varsity football player with narrow eyes
and hands as big as my back.
So he saw me at the bar. So he wanted me,
so I was something people could want and win.
What does that make me. Victim. Cut of meat.
Siren, ambulance or aquatic. I keep drinking like you’ll care.
Like you’ll ever see it, peering through the walls
of a dingy student bar, two hours and a couple hundred kilometers
away from home. I keep saying I don’t know when I do.
It’s embarrassing. People are looking at me,
and I’m still looking for you.
June Lin is a Canadian poet. She loves practical fruits, like clementines and bananas. Her debut chapbook how to construct a breakup poem is out now with fifth wheel press. She tweets sometimes at @junelinwrites.