Margaret Ezra Zhang
The Two Times I Loved You Most in LA
Once, upon Ubering across UCSB to meet
our respective Internet boyfriends, we took a selfie
in the mirror of a public restroom. It was the first time
in a week we would be apart,
but it was okay because the boyfriends
were the filler episode. In the mirror,
I mistook, briefly,
your face for my own. You left the bathroom
first, peeling from me
like a space ranger from her helmet
for the first time.
Another time, at the party hostel, we didn’t party
but instead went to the balcony
to watch people smoke. An older Korean couple, eyeing us
with a loneliness that transcends language, offered you
half a cigarette. Among the four of us, we exchanged a total
of four sentences—the rest were fragmented,
like broken rice. Under the orange
of the cigarette light, we were not four beings but two
pairs. Later you asked
if you could sleep in my bunk even though
we had paid for two. I kept waiting
for you to fall asleep, but you were waiting
for me to fall asleep.
Margaret Ezra Zhang lives in New York. A Best New Poets and Pushcart Prize nominee, they have attended the Tin House Poetry Workshop and been recognized by the Poetry Society of the UK. They have a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Read their work in Waxwing, The Louisville Review, Salt Hill Journal, and other publications, or find them at margaretezrazhang.com or on Twitter @margomargoing
