Absolutes
after Ha Jin
I don't want to die anywhere but you.
While I live, all pursuits will compass towards you.
While we are apart, I will miss you in ways that transcend metaphor.
But I will not steep in nostalgia about the missing.
I will allow the feeling to guide my actions, but will not allow romanticism of our ancestry to override my criticisms of your torments and your tyrannies, or otherwise forgo my better and logical judgement.
For us, I will settle these struggles with the cultural icebergs.
For you, I will abandon the life I wear.
Every friendship forged, every privilege, every dollar and drug.
I accept the bitterness that you will reveal to me: saltsmell, punch clocks, my own insufficiencies.
And at our next meeting, I promise to be tangible, unscammable, gwaai.
Almost everything you want.
You cannot condemn me to ghosthood.
Even so, I will writhe under that hand of my own obsolescence.
Till flesh no longer contains me.
Because memory will never be flesh enough to contain you.