delilah, on a brown couch in the evening
​Aanji Sin

I only think about you now in the shower,
on mornings when I didn’t sleep well
but I’ll pay you back for that time in
quarters, like we used to,
when I would eye the fishbone curve of your hip
and the hair in your bathroom sink.
The room is melting off of its concrete
frame. I ask if you remember whose fault the fire was,
and your response is in the shuddering white
blaze behind the curtains of my eyelids.
The sun for a shadow. The morning I woke up
and stopped recognizing you. Your body,
an imploding star. I used to watch your body
like I was transcribing it for a penny,
every showing, every adaptation,
you on that stage, my heels dug into arid soil.
Remember: the sun off of its axis, the ocean
a far-down thing. We used to feed our quarters
to slot machines and watch the lights go.
                 Play that part back, I wasn’t finished watching.
You are watching the lights, and I
am watching you.
Nowadays, the sky moves slow. I pay for my things
in dimes and 
pick bones out of my teeth and
separate the salt from the sea and
things will oxidize, eventually, if it all stops spinning.
I feed a slot machine for the first time since November 
and think of you. I fuck him 
and think of you. I am always thinking of you.

​

Aanji Sin (SC '24) is a poet from South Pasadena, CA. She loves Victoria Chang, coconut flavored anything, and knowing the end.​