self-portrait as an anteater who didn't make it onto noah's ark
Samantha Liu
'write me a poem,' you say.
i say, 'i’m not a writer,' and i'm not lying when i say this, because writers can do many things, one of which is write. me, i haven’t left my house in a week. in another reality, i sail the atlantic all by myself—drive down to the shore, run into the water, swim past the do not cross buoy and mount a boat until everything recedes into the after-exhale of june. and i would see the sun ablaze with blooming-bird-promise-daffodil-darling, water slick with my every last lilac contradiction, and i would write poems about the it, all of it, until my arm ached from throwing glass bottles to shore. later i’d write on a daisy: i fall in love too easily and feed it to a yawning seabird over a pink-swept sky because, in a different reality, i’d be a romantic.
but i'm home alone this weekend, sprawled on your dad’s favorite piano bench, and the only bottles i have are splashed out empty on my windowsill. there’s paper everywhere, i swear, and i tried writing your name on it only to cross it out and try again. look, what i’m saying is this: earlier today, the moonlight fractured against my overhead window like a metaphor abandoned, and in a different reality, i’d have called it kaleidoscope of godless city / a thousand breaking clocks, but i didn’t, because i’m wordless and head-fucked in this cruel october. look, what i’m saying is this: i never learned to swim past the do not cross buoy. look, what i’m saying is this: the room is filling with saltwater, and all these memories are pooling up, spilling over.
because, look, i never learned how to write a real fucking poem, either, one about how much i love you—you, you, you, your hand on the steering wheel, fingertips washed in sunset, arm around mine like two waves collapsing, and now i’m swimming in a wall of words i never told you. in my dreams, there is a boat and two lifeline bodies and this is what i meant when i said october was the cruelest month because, in a different reality, i’d be a romantic.
now look, all my paper’s falling to pieces, unswirled in this flood, and look, the water’s risen to my mouth already—it's sink or swim but i never learned to swim past that fucking buoy, so i’ll sink your name inside my throat and choke on every foaming whitecap, drowning in the wreckage of every torn page i couldn’t write you—
'write me a poem,' you said.
your name, crashing on my saltwater tongue / my mind, a compass fixated to you / we were marooned from the start, weren't we, & i have always been yours to shipwreck
instead, i laugh. 'i don't write,' i tell you, and the tide bubbles higher.
Samantha Liu is a seventeen year-old from New Jersey. She is a four-time Scholastic national medalist, graduate of the 2021 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, and writer published in The New York Times, Polyphony Lit, elementia, and Eunoia Review, among other places. She also plays Gamepidgeon Word Hunt religiously.