I Never Learned How to LOve You

by Smile Ximai Jiang

---

without admitting defeat. Lying here, belly 
stretched taut beneath me: the way 
the cat rests without giving in 

to sleep. I sink to my knees, fold
my limbs against gauze. Hovering 
above mangled skin, 

you smear acid on my arm. As I prune
into linoleum, your skin leaves mine
once again. Touch, here--

what carelessness to say 
you have never been gentle
with my back against the fridge door,

knife’s edge. The last time we were here,
I roped my arms around you, tried to soften
my hands against your tinseled scales. The faltering 

circle of your arms not unlike our cat 
spilling into shadow. He coils his tail
around my feet, soaks himself in spit

leaking from a barbed tongue. Three summers ago, 
I hurled myself across the floor, hugged you 
for the first time in years. Your back against

my chest like some uneasy parenthesis, jagged
in the dark. My mouth empties itself of its tongue--
wait. I pull my knuckle out of its socket, 

push it back. You are my mother and 
the only thing keeping me alive. Love is
an inevitability I once knew:

the rasp of cicadas in summer. A tail
falls limp. Salt scabbing
​in the hollow of your throat. 

---

Smile Ximai Jiang is a poet from Shenzhen, China and resides in Massachusetts. Smile serves as an editor for Polyphony Lit and The Lumiere Review. She is a 2023 poetry mentee of The Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program under Mario Chard. Her work appears in Peach Mag, Palette Poetry, and Kissing Dynamite. Smile loves sumo oranges and her cat. She tweets at @smiii_jiang. 

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