For Florence

The whole afternoon we talked about what we couldn’t hold onto, but on the floor of your apartment there is room for it—voicemails, our clothes limp on the drying rack, the starchiness of yesterday. One time you ran to the top of a building just to convince someone into tomorrow. Just to show them what you, too, wanted to fall for: that there were things we hadn’t yet lost. The same as wanting to fall for the eyelash on your collar or a rabbit’s foot from the charity shop. But on the floor of your apartment, we can stare at the ceiling until we’re so bored that we’ll go along with anything. Such as your exes calling one by one, your name a path through the cornfield of their mouths. The summer swathing you up again, in the white vinegary smell of your best friend’s house, and a curfew that closes over the day like a warm fist. And your mother if she still said things like give it a couple more years and you’ll get it. We cling to our sides and laugh. We cling to each other and feel our lives crawling forward. And if anything, let me fall for this: that nothing can escape us now, not what we’ve lost already, not what we’re going to lose, including this, even this.

Jun Ying Wen is a writer and artist born in southern China. She is currently a student of English and Peace, Conflict, and Justice at the University of Toronto, and works as an Associate Editor at Acta Victoriana.