by arianna kanji
edited by elim chan and alloe mak

Will it always end up getting lost? Words blend, translations reflected across pages in the rhythmic switching of left to right. The meaning slips beneath the surface—you might doubt its existence entirely. Do you understand? Patterns disappear, reforming across jagged cliffs like waves on an ocean shore. Hear my voice in the shivering soliloquy of the wind, and wonder why my every tone shakes with mirth. I’ll hide reality deep beneath a growing pile of grains, until the erosion withers it away to dust. Try to paint themes across the canvas, but they sting like poison, or moss on fairy wings.

Your insults are low hanging. “Prickled beasts on apple cider, supple skin,” you say, knowing it will always be far too smooth, “like the echoes of a future that always draws tantalizingly near.” You call me stupid with that tantalizing Cheshire Cat smile, then bite those stinging words on the outer rim of my flushed cheeks. Do you realize my every perfection is highlighted by the sweat you wipe on my brow? C’est tout construit pour toi, ma chère. Comprends que ma langue ne parle jamais d’aucune autre.

Yesterday you told me I was too moronic to understand the words spilling from your open-wound lips. So I pressed mine against yours until our bleeding harmonized—until we were interlocked under the essence of miscommunication. I wrote a poem in your name, taped it to my bedside door, and scribbled annotations in the margins. Your native language lies heavy on raw tongues—pinching sharp on the corners you hide from view. Do you still believe I cannot comprehend the energy beating at your eyelids? The sly screeching drawing white lines on freshly burned skin?

Your words are short, clipped by the digital age. Have we slowly lost touch with each other’s hands against our skins? With mops of hair tangling in knots, spinning wheels of dark brown, ashy blond, and streaks of purple? Please tell me you understand this. Please, tell me my every thought has survived the perilous journey from heart to mind to soul to body to soaked cheeks to vomit induced truths to hair spilling dye down drains to the sound of your voice on slightly twisted necks. I beg of you. Just once, I would like to experience the urge to smash my head against ruined plaster instead of my heart. Maybe then you wouldn’t have to scoop what was left out of my low hanging corpse and lick it from your fingertips.

Figure 1: J’adore la façon dont notre monde entoure seulement les personnes comme toi, l’unes qui peuvent murmurer les vertiges dans une fleur scintillant avec la mort. Tu est un présence qui bouge de ma peau pourri à mes yeux mélo à la voix qui pousse dans les jardins de cadavres couper avec les lettres d’amour. Tu es mon cœur abîmé et tenu dans les mains d’une étrangère qui croit qu’elle habite dans le corps d’un ami.

(Translation: I don’t think I love you the way I’m supposed to.)

Your existence is ironic because I am somebody who despises all other languages almost as much as I despise my own. Somebody who once went three months without speaking simply because I liked the feeling of the quiet as it suffocated my blackened lungs. Somebody who was shoved into rooms with mustard yellow walls because brains don’t quite suffer the same fate as bodies. They can never morph. They can only build crinkled shells over bits of corrosion.

Figure 2: Ce n’est pas toi. Ce n’est pas moi, non plus. C’est lui. Pas Lui, entièrement, mais ce qu’il représente. Le diable sur ton épaule veut juste te ressusciter comme une lune pâle et lisse, tes blemishes détruit par les langues du feu. Tu comprends ce que je dis? Tu comprends pourquoi ça change tout et rien en même temps? La saveur de tes lèvres sur la fenêtre-coupe-ouverte cicatrice, c’est ma drogue. Mon addiction. Tu comprends, oui? Tu as payé attention quand ils ont prêché les dangers, mais j’étais trop distrait par tes lettres tourbillon.

(Translation: You will always be you and I will always be me.)

I once told you my household speaks a language I can never bother to decode. Brief, fleeting glances, calloused fingertips on ruined wrists, the inexplicable and all-consuming sensation of warmth. They whisper about you sometimes. When they think I can’t hear through the paper-thin walls built from unsaid love poems in foreign languages. You wouldn’t have understood the words hitched up my throat—dancing along my rib cage. You would’ve stared right through me until your soul withered away as well.

Figure 3: Ce n’est pas juste – comment peux tu me jouer comme une faible marionnettiste, les doigts grinçant, tournoyer mes bras comme les papier poupées rabats, quand tu n’est pas meme la pour dévisager la sang sur ma peau? Vignes à bout de souffle entoure mes yeux, piéger ma tête dans le parfum dont tu ne peux jamais prononcer le nom. Comme tu étais terrifié de parler les mêmes mots que moi, comme cela va nous connecter de façon indivisible. J’espère que tu ne peux pas me comprehend – la torture d’être important est ébranler par la desire d’être inutile.

(Translation: What have you done to me?)

So maybe it does always end up getting lost? In the ripping apart and stitching back together of fumbled sentences? In the smallest of errors shivering under countertops, smashed by silver hammers? Is this too direct? Too soft? Too jagged-edged and cut up like diamonds? Should I begin to sparkle until I burst? Breathe the fumes of the flowers like mind-altering drugs until the world fades to raw skin behind my eyes? 

This isn’t about you—not really. I’m hoping the meaning disappears beneath the surface of the water until only the outline of an idea is visible. Don’t bother to translate my every word. The truth will be lost between hedges and bridge fences, fairy wings and broken smiles, lines of metaphor and underhanded compliments, and bodies hanging from language-learning tongues.