by Marissa M. Zhu
Do you remember that summer
I spent trying to catch your snort in a jar?
That snort you’d bury under a cough every time.
A boy breaking through the drywall of a man.
I wrote twenty-six poems about you.
I gave you a warehouse and turpentine
on your cuffs and night air in your gaze.
But you wore yellow baseball caps, socks with sandals.
Minnesota stamped in cotton, the blockiest state.
Remember that time I poured boiling water
into your roommate’s soda-lime glass?
Not a clean break. A web. Tiny cracks all
through the body and it just fell apart in your hands.
Anyway, I’m on a podcast now,
did you know? They asked me
why I built the AI tool.
I said I saw a gap I wanted
to bridge. Because students weren’t watching
the lectures. Retention. Engagement.
The host asked if the burden of
responsibility should fall on individuals
and I said no it’s structural,
and the right model could fix it. And I was
so earnest, you would’ve slapped your
left knee, cracked that snort open,
and called me a sap.
When I was beachcombing in Aruba I found a rock
shaped like a brain and it reminded me of you. I held it
to my ear the way you’d hold a shell,
expecting the wild heat of your heartbeat
from that morning after. But
there was only the aural tragedy of the tide —
the same wave, crashing into
my ankles, over and over.
I could build another reason for you to orbit my desk.
I could buy us another summer with the jar open.
I’ll bring the rock.
Put your ear to the other side. Listen—
I learned things in the specific key of your voice and called it professional development.
I rearranged an entire curriculum so you could walk past my door on Tuesdays.
I was always making
something beautiful and useless,
always pressing that rock
to your side of the wall,
wasn’t I?
Marissa M. Zhu is a Detroit-based poet and medical education researcher. Her work appears in Opol Literary Journal and on her Substack, The Wanting (marissazhu.substack.com). She is currently assembling her first manuscript, May I Have Your Attention?