Kyle Wang
Anniversary
Last year, I wrote down the names of the Flemish masters
in a notebook I bought
to replace the one I never filled, whose final pages I left blank
for months while I drank alone
and traveled halfway across the continent. What I remember:
reading Watchmen; listening to Frank Ocean;
trying not to think about the wildfires, Heat Death, other signs
of impending heartbreak.
These days, I’m trying to be more concrete, taking time
to notice the physical world.
On my evening walk, I photograph a tree where someone’s carved an X
through a heart with lovers’ initials.
I’m learning not to romanticize pain by calling it beauty.
When I tie my shoes, I kneel the way the cereus does
as it reaches for the moon.
Kyle Wang reads “Anniversary”
Kyle Wang was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kyle’s writing can be found elsewhere in The Adroit Journal and The Kenyon Review.