Fiona Jin

All I Have of You

Cracked concrete. Rubber racetrack. I am running
as fast as I can, flagpole, watery red. Six months ago cold
fingers cradled my head: Stay still for the doctor, stay still for
me. Outside, the vending machine’s coughing up smoke:
Kick it, you said. Make it open, make it bleed. I am this
far from then, measured in breath. I am killing flowers
for you. The balcony above. Wavering shadow. I am this far
from knowing the calories of a salted road. Six months
and still, I don’t remember, but please, save this, like Sweethearts
in your backpack, like a wound scared of closing. I promise
I’ll jump into the snow; promise that in this one, you’d never
meet the headlights of a bus, saltless December sky. The screen
is frozen and somewhere a laughtrack plays—
Everybody loves tragedy until it’s tragic.
Everybody loves until they can't keep running.

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Fiona Jin is from Ames, IA. Her recent poetry is published or forthcoming in wildness, The Penn Review, Half Mystic Journal and The Trace Fossils Review. Currently, she edits for Sine Theta Magazine and reads for The Yale Review.