What I Re-member of Red Strings, Gunshots, and Us

Sophia Zhou, United States

— For J

We were summer nights in Chicago, curled up and waiting

in the fire escape with bags forming under our eyes

while they still shone like stars, erupting into laughter

as you stared yourself into the center of my universe.

Leaning against the washer off-balance from our hoodies tangled together,

we sat splay-legged and pressed tide pods between our thumbs, daring them to burst.

When you saw shrapnel radiating fractures on the glass, you pulled me around the corner.

I could almost forget we turned to face Columbus cast in stone.

Three weeks later and the air outside is still heavy with gunshots.

But inside Gothic Revival limestone, you will stay ivy-wrapped,

you will laugh over the shriek of shower water, and then you will

allow yourself to dismember our memories because you know that

I’ll follow behind you, remembering their pieces as long as

we keep them nested as shared notes in the margins of our book-fair books,

between the words we weaved into red-stringed cat’s cradles

and all the things we can afford to forget.

Imagine it was late August when we first met. Would you and I still

hold these moments behind our teeth, cradling them like those glass noodles we shared?

Previously published in Eunoia Review

Sophia spends her time between Los Angeles, Massachusetts, and China. She loves writing poetry and short stories. When she is not writing, you can find her in the dance studio or admiring flowers growing in sidewalk cracks.