Sophie Yu

contrapuntal in which i confront betrayal

no more sun-faded peonies and instacart                          grocery bags still damp                                   from the wet grass
outside your dorm.                                                                    no more                                  wechat video calls crackling
halfway across the globe.                                                we couldn’t survive                                                 the time zones.

and we were                                                                                  maybe                                                both silently right
from the start: we knew                                       the lyrics, the poems, the hypotheticals                            would collapse. sorry.
i’m sorry, Olive.                                                                        sorry,  ok?                                                    you still toy with

my blue-lights on the 4th floor  running                             your lapis fingertips                                       through the tides
of my thick dark hair. you                                                       part your lips—                                          as if to say, when
did it all end? —                                                                  then brush my ear                                             ever so slightly

as if to say, was there                                                                anything at all                                                  to begin with?
on evenings like these, i would                                            play along, pretend                to live in hypotheticals like these
before i knew                                                                        you liked women.                        with every impossible scene
you directed, you always asked me                                           to marry you                                               and i would say

yes. we planned to—                                                              to live in boston                     in a house full of steamed eggs
fluttering within each lantern, to be                                  wedded by twenty-four,                       jade pinky rings we stole
from the Portsmouth silver shop dazzling                            our fingers, holding                           all the ink-stained petals

of the vase i sculpted, holding                                             the stories you fed me                                 in my pottery class
& watching me choke                                                   while knowing what i didn’t yet                                             know

as you filled the vase with secrets                                           you’d never tell me—                      why did you never tell me?

——————

*as a contrapuntal, this poem is intended to be read both vertically and horizontally.

Sophie Yu (she/her) is a student poet at Phillips Exeter Academy and a New Hampshire Teen Poet Laureate. She is a published author of two poetry collections, as well as the co-founder of Nova Literary Magazine. She is also an alumna of the Sewanee Young Writers Conference and the Juniper Institute for Young Writers Program. Her work has been featured in Spotlong and Eunoia Reviews, and recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, both regionally and nationally. This past summer, she served as an intern for the Academy of American Poets. If you can’t find her in a warmly lit cafe, she is most likely scrapbooking in her room with jazz blasting and a hot cup of jasmine tea brewing on her nightstand.

Literary Magazine: https://www.novalit.org/