Senna Xiang
Warranted
On the afternoon when the officer says you’ve been arrested,
you flicked your cigarette into the hole in your mother’s front porch.
A house pastelled with rot as it tries to forget the fights within its walls.
Four counts of shoplifting and a nine-hundred dollar fine. I soliloquize,
you serenade, but somehow
there’s a difference in the meaning.
Inside, the supermarket is sardined with bottles promising
love, oblivion, forgiveness, forgetfulness. Each glass vessel
a coffin. I come home in the mornings to you scissoring
shards out of the space between your blood vessels. Outside,
the picket fence is peeling. The neighbors punctuate our polygraph,
every tip a trial too criminal to face. Lying is a sin, you
tell me. Tell me you love me. Tell me you’re sorry. Tell me
you mean it. Testimony for the damned. You say that prayer
doesn’t always mean asking for things. Together, we sit on the
splintered pew where you learned your mother passed away.
Alone, I look straight into the candlelight that cauterizes the cross.
If not God, then what? If not prayer, then a dream. First count. I loved
God for you and believed it when you said
I was an angel sent to save you. From what?
Alone, I dream that we live somewhere where a year is not a cul-de-sac
and our evenings in the kitchen don’t explode like perennials. What I mean is
the monotony of the cycle. Together, we walk out of the church.
Die martyrs in the afterbirth of holy water. I’ve lied about you
to my mother and yours. Twice I’ve stood on your mother’s front porch
barefoot. Twice I’ve watched you turn your back on her as your footsteps
punch the grass. I skirt the void in the wood and kneel by the flatness in the floor.
In the distance, those saintly singing police sirens. I push my hands
into those itchy silhouettes, yours to leave and mine to thieve. Second count.
Every evening, I find you in the kitchen. Month-old petunias melt off the blood
on your hands. Let’s call it quits after three months. Waiting
on better days that won’t come. Better days were billboards we
passed on the road trip we thought would make us closer. I ask you
to call me and you do because you fell in love with me more that day.
K-pop on the radio blaring manufactured love. I sit next to the
landline whose wires burn a bigger hole in the porch. I was still
in denial that day. All my words clogged the scummy pipes of my throat.
My words, a third wealth you scammed through the line. Your words, penniless
in the face of my opulence. The officer’s search warrant, yellow and crinkled
at the edges. Like this was a misdemeanor in the making. I still love you
so lividly. I still have so much to say. I won’t. I hold this pretense
like a handbasket. Stuff it full of falsely inviting housewarming gifts.
I say goodbye to you one last time on the porch steps. The officer
has already opened the back door. I look down into the wooden hole,
no surprise that it’s already been filled.
I think the space will be good for both of us.
The last count: the future you never meant to fulfill. Evening finds me
with the porch light oscillating like a polygraph. Sorry swings into
I love you swings into—
you flicked your cigarette into the hole in your mother’s front porch.
A house pastelled with rot as it tries to forget the fights within its walls.
Four counts of shoplifting and a nine-hundred dollar fine. I soliloquize,
you serenade, but somehow
there’s a difference in the meaning.
Inside, the supermarket is sardined with bottles promising
love, oblivion, forgiveness, forgetfulness. Each glass vessel
a coffin. I come home in the mornings to you scissoring
shards out of the space between your blood vessels. Outside,
the picket fence is peeling. The neighbors punctuate our polygraph,
every tip a trial too criminal to face. Lying is a sin, you
tell me. Tell me you love me. Tell me you’re sorry. Tell me
you mean it. Testimony for the damned. You say that prayer
doesn’t always mean asking for things. Together, we sit on the
splintered pew where you learned your mother passed away.
Alone, I look straight into the candlelight that cauterizes the cross.
If not God, then what? If not prayer, then a dream. First count. I loved
God for you and believed it when you said
I was an angel sent to save you. From what?
Alone, I dream that we live somewhere where a year is not a cul-de-sac
and our evenings in the kitchen don’t explode like perennials. What I mean is
the monotony of the cycle. Together, we walk out of the church.
Die martyrs in the afterbirth of holy water. I’ve lied about you
to my mother and yours. Twice I’ve stood on your mother’s front porch
barefoot. Twice I’ve watched you turn your back on her as your footsteps
punch the grass. I skirt the void in the wood and kneel by the flatness in the floor.
In the distance, those saintly singing police sirens. I push my hands
into those itchy silhouettes, yours to leave and mine to thieve. Second count.
Every evening, I find you in the kitchen. Month-old petunias melt off the blood
on your hands. Let’s call it quits after three months. Waiting
on better days that won’t come. Better days were billboards we
passed on the road trip we thought would make us closer. I ask you
to call me and you do because you fell in love with me more that day.
K-pop on the radio blaring manufactured love. I sit next to the
landline whose wires burn a bigger hole in the porch. I was still
in denial that day. All my words clogged the scummy pipes of my throat.
My words, a third wealth you scammed through the line. Your words, penniless
in the face of my opulence. The officer’s search warrant, yellow and crinkled
at the edges. Like this was a misdemeanor in the making. I still love you
so lividly. I still have so much to say. I won’t. I hold this pretense
like a handbasket. Stuff it full of falsely inviting housewarming gifts.
I say goodbye to you one last time on the porch steps. The officer
has already opened the back door. I look down into the wooden hole,
no surprise that it’s already been filled.
I think the space will be good for both of us.
The last count: the future you never meant to fulfill. Evening finds me
with the porch light oscillating like a polygraph. Sorry swings into
I love you swings into—
Biography
Senna Xiang (she/her) is a teen writer. Her work has been published in Gasher Journal, Peach Magazine, Superfroot Magazine, and other lovely places. Her writing has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the Adroit Prizes.
