Work Text:
That Candy You Saved to the Last Moment
My brain has become incurably weird
and I know it’s your doing.
Whenever I see madeleines, I see mellow shells
stuffed with Doraemons.
And the Doraemons start to call my name
cheerfully, their snowball hands
spinning like capsules of a Ferris wheel.
Why do you keep denying me my sanity
simply because you’ve lost yours?
Yes, you are mad enough to steal my brain
to think about time machine when you’ve died for so long.
Look what you’ve done.
How do I know what you are thinking?
Because you told me last night in my dream
with your airy voice of an airhead
asking me to choose between eternal solitude
and a moment of radiance, as if we haven’t
made our choice already. Excited by your crisp folly,
I boasted passionately that the two were equals
and I’d fix the mistake you made.
You must be laughing at my theatrical response.
But what do you know? Let me surprise you
by telling you that I know it is our mistake
and inerasable: how can I erase a sunset
that smells of you?
Your snowy white skin, hair and shirt
turned you into an angel statue in that sunset.
Certainly one made of cocaine, not marble.
I attended you faithfully with a rare rose
cold and blazing like you: my revolver.
Delighted, you chained me to your smile, the clearest
marsh lit by the curiousest will-o’-the-wisp.
You were in a mad scientist lab coat,
gazing with blinding eyes
at the red and purple chemicals you made exploding across the sky
and I was compelled to join your mess.
You drew a secret path for us with your blood.
On my way, I instinctively impressed my fingers
into your scarlet handprint, sinking deeper
into the hottest and deepest lips I ever kissed.
You waited until I came and stood by you
and then opened your arms
to embrace the world for the last time
while I held you in the deep blue of my eyes.
With a single bullet I took you away
from the world you loved so breathlessly
that your delicate trachea ached
and sealed you in your home–
the sea I’d brought to you in my eyes.
Of course I wouldn’t let you become foams,
thoughtful little mermaid. You’d danced
on knives long enough
for your love of humans and their world.
Come back and sing your ardent songs to me.
Remember you had retrieved your voice
since you first heard mine.
Yes, I hear you
insisting that you are human.
Pitiful imagination for a Doraemon fan,
I am sorry to say. Now hear this:
The mermaids had more beautiful voices
than any human being could have.
Can you picture that?
There are so many things you will never know, excited?
I won’t list them for you because I am finally back
from fairyland to pursue your question:
we are the moment of radiance
crystallizing the eternal solitude of each other.