Sophia (YiRui) Liao
Sophia (YiRui) Liao is a current freshman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A Dean’s List student and Staff Writer for The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, she wishes people would call her “nerd” more often. Always a New Yorker at heart, she walks at a pace that has lost her many a friendship with shorter people and sorely misses The Downtown Brunch Scene. In an effort to assimilate with Massachusettsans, she tries to incorporate the word “wicked” into daily conversation but her friends aren’t buying it… yet.
Published 3/6/16
Published 3/6/16
It Looks Something Like This
we’re driving along the coastline and you have one hand on the wheel and one hand on my lap and you’re humming something softer than the sunlight pressed against my eyelids, i wonder what would happen if i carved our likenesses into the folds of the sky, a liquid promise, we’d never find ourselves lost at the meridian ever again
whisper unless you want the things you’re saying to carry across the pacific, we are cradled in an infinite summer and it will be years later before we realize that this is how we want to be remembered, your eyelashes tangled in mine and closer still
wake up next to me with patches of sunlight on our skin, gold flecks catching on our hairs, breakfast in bathrobes, me feeding you cubed fruit and you melting butter onto my pancakes, it matters that we made our way into each other’s dreams last night and that we’re dizzy for a whole other lifetime to be had, there is a whole other lifetime to be had
I’m here and you’re underwater and we can’t ask for much else, except we want to be electric, to melt the night into an echo, I write about lips as scarlet smudges and promises knotted into wisps of candle smoke but really, I believe in you, in you as a tiny blot on the horizon, in you as an incandescent lullaby, in you as postscripts that could write a story of their own
recipes handwritten on the bottom of chinaware, your plane lacing over the seventh and final continent, your tongue melting between my teeth, pollen dusting our fingertips, Americana built into the chocolate sodas and chrome surfaces of roadside diners, succulents in purple deserts and
you, standing on the other side, a canyon between us, cradled in sunset, your silhouette burning into my retinas as you mouth across
this is happiness
Going Over Everything You Missed These Last Three Years
If you count the creases on mother’s face,
you’ll have the number of stillborns she carried
and the number of miscarriages she didn’t
It’s been awhile since her doctor
could find her pulse, she probes around mother’s soft places
only to come back with an orphaned silence
I remember the way she sliced fruit, the way nectar
laced down her hand and pooled in the folds of skin
at her wrist
I remember not telling her that I was allergic to the apples
In loneliness, I hear her voice drenching the apartment
in a hungry octave all those years ago,
and for a second, I understand all the unapologetic ways of a mother
When I blew out my candles last week, I prayed
that I would be able to curl against her once more,
a bonsai plant filling her chest cavity and other hollow curvatures
I guess it’s something about the way a single fork peers out from an empty cake box
Enough years have taught me the verge isn’t very different from
hanging cheap aquarelles in direct sunlight and that growing into a new skin
is one way to silence an ache.
Some Strawberry Patch in August
We’re curled against each other in the field,
watching airplanes tattoo exhaust into the liquid pool spread thin above us, it was
one of those days when we could discern the shape of the wind
The rise and fall of his chest, I notice as if there was
a kaleidoscope pressed against the text of his heartbeat
this morning, we sat on the kitchen counter, legs laced together,
feeding each other cubes of cheese off toothpicks, there were fruits swelling off the branches
outside our window, we really couldn’t ask for much more
I guess last year was all about loneliness, the way we scribbled on walls to
silence an ache, the way we couldn’t even remember how it felt to
be in bed and feel someone’s hand slacken in ours
as their snores rippled down our vertebrae, the way everything became
about homesickness, the way we missed continental breakfasts and loved the interstate, the way
we longed to believe in dancing and young people laughing
He looks at me like I am supposed to say something and I don’t, I just pluck
a strawberry off a nearby vine and put it in my mouth, his mouth, mouths in the same place at the
same time
The next morning, he wakes up, sees the shape of his face molded into the pillow,
smooths out the imprint then yawns and this goes on for another week,
another year, another lifetime
Some days, I hear him calling out my name, but I am already gone, already down by the
strawberry patch thinking about how nothing has happened but that it’s fine,
that it’s all better than excitement anyways
What Keeps You Up At Night
Your last words on the answering machine before you left to buy a carton of eggs at the grocery store and never returned, words splitting like lake water when a lone night swimmer’s body cleaves through the blue
trail of silent bubbles at the toes
All the letters you sent me, age 18, utterly stardust and moonbeam calm, the lingering scent from your wrist to substitute for all that is lost between us, all that is stardust and moonbeam calm
The warmth of your palm on the small of my back when you whispered happy birthday into my right ear, the warmth of your palm running down and between my legs in bed later that night, knowing just how you make me feel and on my birthday too, whispers sliding into the whorl of my ear as the sun moved upwards in the eastern sky, bright yellow egg yolk antigravity on the side of a glass measuring bowl
atomic as unperceivable like from orbit or the atmosphere, atomic as something that reduces a city to smithereens, its stories, secrets, myths, lovers at bars, prostitutes held at gunpoint, mothers slipping notes into their children’s lunchboxes, road trippers passing through, the elderly who never left even as skyscrapers as cataracts clouded their vision over the years
atomic as in your twitch from next to me when you have a bad dream and ATOMIC as in viscous silence that is infinitely different from the sound of your absence
The fact that when looking at the downtown skyline from the Great Lawn, you will not notice the single light that goes off at the end of someone’s day for the thousands of other lights still blinking back at you
you find yourself standing there, 3 in the morning in your pajamas and slippers, my name on the tip of your tongue, melting like a dust speck until there is no longer sustenance in the molecular buzz that signals the inevitability of my wounds healing after the realization that there are no longer any frontiers in the world just the jealous breath of those who stand staring at skylines and wishing to find me like a smear, a blot somewhere
you want to turn back the clock, destination: our summertime dinner on a crumbling veranda in Venice before all that chatter about the place sinking
as you begin the walk back to your apartment in your pajamas and slippers, you think about Venetian masquerade balls and all the whispery syllables and gentle glass clinking slowly amounting to a frenzied, visceral longing to survive as the tides claim our past and all that was to come.
Published 04/19/17
we’re driving along the coastline and you have one hand on the wheel and one hand on my lap and you’re humming something softer than the sunlight pressed against my eyelids, i wonder what would happen if i carved our likenesses into the folds of the sky, a liquid promise, we’d never find ourselves lost at the meridian ever again
whisper unless you want the things you’re saying to carry across the pacific, we are cradled in an infinite summer and it will be years later before we realize that this is how we want to be remembered, your eyelashes tangled in mine and closer still
wake up next to me with patches of sunlight on our skin, gold flecks catching on our hairs, breakfast in bathrobes, me feeding you cubed fruit and you melting butter onto my pancakes, it matters that we made our way into each other’s dreams last night and that we’re dizzy for a whole other lifetime to be had, there is a whole other lifetime to be had
I’m here and you’re underwater and we can’t ask for much else, except we want to be electric, to melt the night into an echo, I write about lips as scarlet smudges and promises knotted into wisps of candle smoke but really, I believe in you, in you as a tiny blot on the horizon, in you as an incandescent lullaby, in you as postscripts that could write a story of their own
recipes handwritten on the bottom of chinaware, your plane lacing over the seventh and final continent, your tongue melting between my teeth, pollen dusting our fingertips, Americana built into the chocolate sodas and chrome surfaces of roadside diners, succulents in purple deserts and
you, standing on the other side, a canyon between us, cradled in sunset, your silhouette burning into my retinas as you mouth across
this is happiness
Going Over Everything You Missed These Last Three Years
If you count the creases on mother’s face,
you’ll have the number of stillborns she carried
and the number of miscarriages she didn’t
It’s been awhile since her doctor
could find her pulse, she probes around mother’s soft places
only to come back with an orphaned silence
I remember the way she sliced fruit, the way nectar
laced down her hand and pooled in the folds of skin
at her wrist
I remember not telling her that I was allergic to the apples
In loneliness, I hear her voice drenching the apartment
in a hungry octave all those years ago,
and for a second, I understand all the unapologetic ways of a mother
When I blew out my candles last week, I prayed
that I would be able to curl against her once more,
a bonsai plant filling her chest cavity and other hollow curvatures
I guess it’s something about the way a single fork peers out from an empty cake box
Enough years have taught me the verge isn’t very different from
hanging cheap aquarelles in direct sunlight and that growing into a new skin
is one way to silence an ache.
Some Strawberry Patch in August
We’re curled against each other in the field,
watching airplanes tattoo exhaust into the liquid pool spread thin above us, it was
one of those days when we could discern the shape of the wind
The rise and fall of his chest, I notice as if there was
a kaleidoscope pressed against the text of his heartbeat
this morning, we sat on the kitchen counter, legs laced together,
feeding each other cubes of cheese off toothpicks, there were fruits swelling off the branches
outside our window, we really couldn’t ask for much more
I guess last year was all about loneliness, the way we scribbled on walls to
silence an ache, the way we couldn’t even remember how it felt to
be in bed and feel someone’s hand slacken in ours
as their snores rippled down our vertebrae, the way everything became
about homesickness, the way we missed continental breakfasts and loved the interstate, the way
we longed to believe in dancing and young people laughing
He looks at me like I am supposed to say something and I don’t, I just pluck
a strawberry off a nearby vine and put it in my mouth, his mouth, mouths in the same place at the
same time
The next morning, he wakes up, sees the shape of his face molded into the pillow,
smooths out the imprint then yawns and this goes on for another week,
another year, another lifetime
Some days, I hear him calling out my name, but I am already gone, already down by the
strawberry patch thinking about how nothing has happened but that it’s fine,
that it’s all better than excitement anyways
What Keeps You Up At Night
Your last words on the answering machine before you left to buy a carton of eggs at the grocery store and never returned, words splitting like lake water when a lone night swimmer’s body cleaves through the blue
trail of silent bubbles at the toes
All the letters you sent me, age 18, utterly stardust and moonbeam calm, the lingering scent from your wrist to substitute for all that is lost between us, all that is stardust and moonbeam calm
The warmth of your palm on the small of my back when you whispered happy birthday into my right ear, the warmth of your palm running down and between my legs in bed later that night, knowing just how you make me feel and on my birthday too, whispers sliding into the whorl of my ear as the sun moved upwards in the eastern sky, bright yellow egg yolk antigravity on the side of a glass measuring bowl
atomic as unperceivable like from orbit or the atmosphere, atomic as something that reduces a city to smithereens, its stories, secrets, myths, lovers at bars, prostitutes held at gunpoint, mothers slipping notes into their children’s lunchboxes, road trippers passing through, the elderly who never left even as skyscrapers as cataracts clouded their vision over the years
atomic as in your twitch from next to me when you have a bad dream and ATOMIC as in viscous silence that is infinitely different from the sound of your absence
The fact that when looking at the downtown skyline from the Great Lawn, you will not notice the single light that goes off at the end of someone’s day for the thousands of other lights still blinking back at you
you find yourself standing there, 3 in the morning in your pajamas and slippers, my name on the tip of your tongue, melting like a dust speck until there is no longer sustenance in the molecular buzz that signals the inevitability of my wounds healing after the realization that there are no longer any frontiers in the world just the jealous breath of those who stand staring at skylines and wishing to find me like a smear, a blot somewhere
you want to turn back the clock, destination: our summertime dinner on a crumbling veranda in Venice before all that chatter about the place sinking
as you begin the walk back to your apartment in your pajamas and slippers, you think about Venetian masquerade balls and all the whispery syllables and gentle glass clinking slowly amounting to a frenzied, visceral longing to survive as the tides claim our past and all that was to come.
Published 04/19/17