November 7, 2020

I remember that morning because the champagne was sold out from every corner store,
we woke up in accidental bliss,
although we didn’t realize this until we were halfway to Fort Greene
and all the cars were honking up and down Fulton street in celebration.
My girlfriend’s golden hair was a sunbeam and I held her hand
as we weaved through ecstasy and bodies
that had held so much grief and anger for four long years,
and at the top of the park, someone had dragged
these twenty-pound speakers out onto the earthen landing
of a stately brownstone apartment.
Every movement made was to dance– at the time,
we were still wearing masks outdoors, many had rushed outside
banging the pots and pans they’d been beating every evening
around 6 PM in the cold gray dark… that sort of life we’d been living
now feels like a footnote in a stuffy encyclopedia, or maybe
that’s where I want those memories to stay: as some sort of aberration,
a sunburn in November, love letters locked away in a cardboard box…
how foreign and wonderful it felt to be one among hundreds of bodies feeling, again,
the ineffable things that moved through and around us.
Again, I try to stow these strange times away into some gray
filing cabinet within the basement of my mind, and I generally do this
with no problem– after all, I recounted this whole story
and didn’t mention you,
not even once.

Molly is an Asian American poet and attorney. Her work centers around Chinese culture, her family and the things that make her cry. She has been published in Hobart Pulp, the Ghost City Press, and Bodega Magazine, among others. In 2021 and 2022, she was nominated for Pushcart prizes. She currently serves as assistant poetry editor for Passengers Journal. She is the winner of the 2021 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize hosted by the Cordella Press and her debut chapbook, Asian American Translations, is now available for purchase. To learn more, please visit www.MollyZhu.com or follow her on Instagram @mlz316.