The Symmetry of Fish by Su Cho

Author:Su Cho [Cho, Su]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

my bed shakes and i assume the ghosts are finally getting me

for Kia

But it’s just an earthquake in Indiana. I like to tell

this story because it reminds me of you. We first

met in high school summer gym class, where

we turned jeans into floatation devices and tallied

bowling scores by hand. We got close in AP English

when we admitted that we read Jane Eyre in one evening,

how we loved the teacher’s tape recording of Macbeth

because we really didn’t understand what was supposed

to be funny. Back then, we wanted to be rappers or doctors,

and now benevolent EDM DJs in Vegas. We love to chug

coffee past eleven p.m. so we can shit a final time before

a night of dancing and waddling through snow in high heels

we bought after we broke up with our boyfriends.

The older we get, we are always late. Like to the Odesza concert

you won radio tickets to, how we shivered underneath

big blankets covered in dog hair, the outfits we picked out

months ago never seen in blurry pictures. I am writing all this

to get to what I really want to say—you are the most faithful

person I know. You believe in prayer because you believe

in ghosts, in vengeful spirits because you’ve seen them. Once,

you asked me if I thought you were silly for being so superstitious

and I said no—I pray when I am scared, the only time I take

in Jesus’s name I pray seriously. Me trusting my mouth and you,

for good measure, hanging a picture of Jesus above the bed,

a crucifix, and even a bible on your nightstand even though

we both don’t read it anymore. Here, I try to conjure images

or metaphors of our selves but I can only

remember the things we say to each other—isn’t it funny

how every Asian girl we know is engaged or about to be engaged

to a white boy or now we know not to trust white moms from Carmel

because they voted for Trump or we’d rather them smile at us while keeping

their hate to themselves or isn’t it funny we don’t go out anymore or this is better

than the drunk white boys who follow us to the car all the time or after midnight

or our mothers this our mothers that or—

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