Poetry by Cynthia Wang

Edited by Lynn Choi

I dream of you.
I dream of you over and over again.

When I dream of you, you are a person in my life.

We are seven and eight, squishy cheeks pressed together as I ask you what audiobook you are listening to, and you tell me, pushing me off of you.

We are children in my dream.

But I had a particularly vivid dream that you got married.

I sat in the crowd, by the aisle, and I watched as you had smiled at the bride approaching you, as you had smiled at your bride the whole time through. I had stared at you, heart eerily calm, souring, yet comforted. I was in love with you, not in the way that I used to be, but in the way that one might be in love with a memory. Seeing you marry someone else made me happy in a way I did not know could occur.

You were the first person to treat me kindly.

Looking back now, I had a fear that I would get whisked away by the first boy to treat me kindly, and have my whole future ruined because of a boy.

But I am part of the more fortunate—you had not been kind to me so you could whisk me away, you had been kind to me out of the goodness of your heart, and that had struck me.

As I laid in bed with a thousand scenarios playing in my head, I had dreamed that you would pick a university close to me, with the sole purpose of picking me.

But you didn’t, since dreams are just dreams and you had never once considered me to be more than a sibling to you.

So I didn’t pick you either.

I had a foolish dream that if I went to the east coast with you, you would notice me a little more, but you never once had the intention of picking me, and that was heartbreaking to me.

At seventeen, I asked you to give me closure.

You had apologized for making it come off that you had been interested in me, mentioning that you never had that intention to begin with.

I knew you didn’t, but it didn’t stop me anyway. 

When I debrief with my mom at our kitchen counter, recalling a time when you were just a doorknob away, she tells me that you were the right person at the wrong time.

Eons ago, I would have tried to work it out.
But now, I laugh when she tells me, because you are no longer in my life.

I may dream of you again and again, but I will never have you back.

So when I dream of you now, it’s always fragments of forgotten times we spent together, huddled together on my bean couch, my iPad on my lap as you wrestle me to play Minecraft on it. 

When I dream of you now, I watch as you bring me fruit during my fever-struck sickness, mistaking you as my mother despite your voice sounding nothing like hers.

When I dream of you now, we are kids, not adults.
You are a memory that I love, not a person in my life.

So I no longer dream of staring at you at your wedding—instead, I dream of the two of us on my trampoline, splitting it up with an imaginary line, declaring what kingdoms we would be. 

I dream of you less and less now, and I no longer miss you.

So when I dream of you, 
you are a memory to love—
not a person.