Two Poems

Every train I’ve ever run for has left me &

still, I find myself gripping my straps

& pounding pavement, waving down whoever’s

evening blurs behind the power lines & purpling

clouds. I do not wish loneliness of any kind

upon anybody, but I’d take it

in its truest form.

I’ve leaned, sleepdrunk,

against the change machine praying for one

midnight of no one.

Stood taut next to lingering hands

& too-close cigarette breath. Lied on my age,

laughed away a missed stop, centered my gravity

before the right jolt plops me into the wrong lap;

everyone’s got ghosts at home, don’t they?

Some trail us from the station first.

A flickering lamp has never caused me to question

my shadow, but a glance’ll get me sick

at the sight of me.

I’ve wished my existence into

the blue seats, that indigo hour of anything

goes. I’ve stilled myself so streetlight

I couldn’t release my breath until morning.

I do not wish loneliness of any kind

upon anybody, but show me that someone

without someone they can’t shake.

Show me their stop & I’ll show you the longest way home,

every back alley exit where I bounced

my name off the brick

& dodged the echo.

The Kiss of an If

sweet vermilion of eager lips; all sunset-hot, the sweat

without promise & drop-jaw glance, oh, the dance

of it all— I’d risk me, too. its capital T thrill, how it

vibrates, chills, wouldn’t you? if you could almost—just,

the not-quite next to, the never inside enough,

the glistening neck like morning dew, like a midnight

stroll buzzing from the tip of your toes, even

if it meant your aching heels the morning back,

wouldn’t you? the wait, the snap & spark, the frisk

of your feet under the dinner table, when your eyes

flutter shut, when you water your plants

in the windowsill with a little more wind chime

in your whisper: the whisper you save for soft things

like newborns & dandelions & the turn of your

cheek towards her when the day breaks, wouldn’t you?

if she called you by all of your names? if it meant

the last time you could inhale without a hitch, that

strip of light of the skyline growing dimmer

by day—if it meant the possibility of? the no more

& never again, the reach & retreat, the sinking

in your stomach, this here, this senseless back

& forth, the onslaught of afternoons without

my chin in your hands, our joined breaths

after a joke; even if it meant the absence of me,

wouldn’t you? let even the trail of her finger ruin us?

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Aris Kian

Aris Kian is a student of community organizing and abolition. She is ranked #10 in the 2020 Women of the World Poetry Slam and 4th in the 2019 CUPSI competition with UH team CoogSlam. She is an Emerging Writers Fellow with Writers in the Schools and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow pursuing her MFA at the University of Houston. Her poems are published with Write About Now, Underground Journal, Houston Review of Books, and elsewhere.