the blueshift journal

The city sinks, unblooms. How human do I need to be

for this. I can tell the war stories. Paraphrase

the blood-feathered sky. Pull it to its feet

—by the throat. I can deliver Busan thick

with screams in the shape of a single

candle flame. One second. The body will only

stay in the air for as long as you ask it to.

The body will only stay. Did I ever explain?

The word for oxygen is also the word for grave.

There’s a Korean film where the zombies

almost make it to the city’s gray walls. But the girl

makes it first. But the man on the train still loves her

and she can’t see it in his eyes. The girl

always makes it first and so all war stories end.

And so the train stops and the light in my hand

chases all the red to the edge of the screen,

where a father waits for his girl but the walls

are bone now and so, so high. He’ll

keep looking, I know it, but the fire is back

and his memory’s failing and these limbs

weren’t grown for murder, melting. How human

do I need to be. I could stop this now.

Lift the curtain, lower the gun. Walk into

the crowd with my head steel-knotted

to the ceiling. The city would forgive.

Listen: I’m not asking for a home,

only a place to point to on the map,

in a crowded theater. Not for an anthem,

only a line in the sand. I can tell

all the stories. I am owed a birthplace,

a bullet, three seconds longer. Busan

doesn’t love me anymore and I can see that

in her eyes. But I’ve made it. But I’m trembling.

But I remember the way blood tastes

on trains. Listen: I’m folding my wounds

away from the light. I’m not asking for much,

only everything.