JOYCE LIU -

IF WE WERE GHOSTS

We could do whatever we wanted. I’d haunt everyone with you, follow you to the cliffsides, sit with you and brood. We could frown at the waves until our eyebrows fall off. The Atlantic is dangerous, its waves our demons grasping for our feet, but in death you and I could stand on the black rocks as long as we fucking wanted. 

You’d leave me behind sometimes too. You want to look at old paintings in Europe and I want to lie down in the Sistine Chapel after-hours and stare at the ceiling until I fall asleep. Ghosts don’t need to sleep but I’ve been pretending to be alive for so many years that I can’t help doing it even after I don’t need to.

I want to say that you’re the only person I’ve never needed to pretend with, but I think we just put on different costumes for everyone we love. 

Once a year we could meet up in Monaco. We could have ghost brunch with ghost fucking mimosas. What do you do with your time once you finally have enough of it? Travel the world? Spy on your friends? Or squint at the stars with me on the roof of your childhood house, the way we always wanted to, finally free to stay up as late as we want without getting caught. Nobody would look for me anymore except you. Nobody would want to.

I think I’d take you to meet the family. Not my parents, I don’t care, but our ancestors, across a continent and an ocean and a continent again. I want someone to kneel for without blame. I want to be on my knees without someone’s hand pushing my head down into the dirt. Gravestones don’t ask anything of you but tears and those I have always had in abundance, so let’s sit here in the village fields and water the weeds instead of the rice paddies. We could lean against the tombstones and watch the ducks swim by. We could tip our heads into the well and drink without drowning. The sun would set and they would light the candles and we would still be there, even at the end of the world.

If we were ghosts, could we still hold hands? Would you let me?

GOOD MORNING TEXTS ARE FOR FOOLS

and i don’t send good morning texts anymore.

i miss that sometimes. knowing that someone cared about when i woke up, when i went to sleep. only the sun gets that kind of care, gets its rising and setting recorded down to the minute. i miss care. i miss mixing pancake batter together in the kitchen, miss steaming buns on the stove and spilling oil in the sink. i miss making mistakes with you. i miss being allowed to fail.

except with you i was never really allowed to fail, was i. not when it mattered. not when everything i said was wrong and you could never be happy and the lines of your mouth were settling into the edge of the knife i cut my thumb on last night, something to slit my throat with. the flow of time smooths over a lot of things but the jagged edges of my heart are still here at the bottom of the river, still sharp. it’s easy to forget how it felt, to only taste the chocolate chip muffins you gave me for christmas and not the stomach acid i got for new year’s. it’s easier to love people when they’re not around, and you’re not here anymore, so i want to love you again, to want and feel (if i’m lucky) wanted.

you only know how to love people when you’re winning.

i’m not sorry i stopped throwing every game.

i was walking past the park yesterday and i thought, these last three years will be defined by you. i wish my past was defined by what i did, and not what you did or didn’t do to me. i woke up this morning and saw the blackbirds scatter across the sky and i wanted to tell you, but you used to tell me liking birds was too romantic, and besides

i don’t send good morning texts anymore.

and meeting your eyes isn’t falling off a cliff, and i don’t smile at your messages, and the jokes are getting stale, like cookies left too long on the kitchen counter, like a heart in the frost of a canadian winter, like the crumbs of the muffins you made last christmas, when you could still see the grass and the geese

and in the morning, i squint at the clock, and i read my co-star, and i look at the bisexual icon, and i look, and look, and look, and i don’t

send

the text.


not anymore. not today.

Joyce Liu is a teenage poet from Ottawa, Canada. When she's not writing she can be found taking long walks in the woods and watching Formula 1 races. More of her work can be found in released and upcoming issues of perhappened, FEED, and Burning Jade Literary and Arts Magazine.