The Borderline Suitcase
Where the city thins to ash and scaffolds,
a suitcase slumps against the wall,
its hinges groaning the way
a throat stammers a lost mother tongue.
I speak again to the body I wore—
the child curled beneath a damp quilt,
burrowed into the sofa’s hollow,
breathing boiled rice and dust,
yet lifted high in my father’s
calloused, steady hands.
Bare feet balanced on blistered asphalt,
I walked the block where sirens
tore the air but never stopped for me,
where factory soot smudged
the syllables of my name.
The fence’s jagged rust
bit into the arch of my heel—
each step a ledger inked
in rust and rhythm.
Now all the selves I’ve been
gather at the bed’s iron corners—
silent witnesses stitched tight
with the tongues I was asked to forget.
Above me, leather soles pace,
and someone’s laughter leaks
through ceilings I’ll never reach.
And this city—
it may not notice the sagging suitcase,
but this battered frame holds
the bones of my becoming,
layered with dust, hunger,
and every exile I have lived.
.
Jasmine Outside the Door
When crows gather thick upon the lawn,
jasmine at the threshold begins to brown.
Coat and cocoa rest by the door,
no night will return you to this bed.
It’s Round Midnight we never finished at the table,
cold jazz riff spreading against the grain.
We drift in the interlaced oxblood grain of the wood,
mute and choked, through the narrow throat.
“If” still hesitates beneath my tongue, while
the petals of the present scatter in the wind.
Storm parts the curtain by the door,
and I worry for the jasmine outside.
You asked what became of the man in Round Midnight;
the rain knew who thinned away with it.
Wilted jasmine petals on a crow’s back.
.
Us
Hospice bed, your hands—
a reptile’s bones sealed in stone—
no longer unfold.
Console me with your fin of salt,
those stories half-spoken over soup,
before the rust set in.
Stitch our gasping mouths, brimming with decades,
to the fishhook that hauls us toward a shore of thorns—
or home, as we once called it.
We cannot name the wound. We kneel inside it,
beneath the calendar of unmarked days, tasting
the blood of bells from that church in Dresden,
we never reach.
Still I find your newborn feathers—winged—
as moonlight frays through the rose window,
flying across the beast’s iron muzzle—
your oxygen tank hisses:
a tide between our ribs.
.
Sean Wang is a PhD candidate based in Australia. His poems have appeared in dadakuku and Bristol Noir, and are forthcoming in Cerasus Poetry Magazine and The Remington Review. You can find him at @Seanwang1997
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 