maybe it’s incongruous to part ways in a letter / but
you’ve become an extraneous integral to my identity / everything
since birth revolved around your axis: / no sun, no chlorine, no dairy / but
our priorities diverge still further apart / i like to play tennis & piano / but
you cling to my fingers, unable to let me out of your death grip / until nights
i scratch to death trying to get you off my body / i’m embarrassed when my friends
see the red marks you extrapolate onto my skin / the way you get heated
swelling out of proportion / & it didn’t use to be that way / at first we complemented
each other / you made me conscious of what i input, tossed the processed food
and sugar / taught me nourishment and self-care / warm baths ten to twenty minutes,
fragrance-free soaps / i tamed your beast of a personality / but our relationship is an
asymptote / until you approach zero i will never be at my max / & this series
has no end, no convergence / until days make it seem i have
no life / so take away your dried blood, wounds, and the smudges on my sundress.
Evy Shen is a high school junior from Statesboro, Georgia. Her writing has been recognized in an international Roundpier Poetry Contest and is published or forthcoming in Lumiere Review and Eunoia Review. She loves to travel, her favorite place in the US being Soho/Times Square in New York City, whereas her favorite place outside of the US is Suzhou, China. When she is not writing and furiously studying, she is outside with her family enjoying God’s beautiful nature.