Days

BY: Alan Yue

There are deep footprints in the snow. Dad, I was

five and still sinking –five crisp k-hhs, and the snow met my feet.

The air was cold, made my nose glass

and filled the gray sky with floaters.

Today, I am walking behind you for the first time.

It’s so easy to catch falls from here. But you aren’t, in fact you

are too still, a cold stone being fluttered into a white bed.

And I squint past the flickering and every five crisp

k-hhs your stone gray jacket shrinks until

Dad –I think you are already gone.

...

Your winters were for us. Always

for the flicker of a yellow bulb above the dinner table. Always

for the wind to lisp on glass. Always

for the child to stop lying. Always

for my birthday at the end of winter, you would make cheesecake.

...

But I still hear you thud up the stairs of our old apartment and I still

hear

“Where's my son?”

and I still jump out from behind the couch and you still jump back

and I still run to you and you still hug me, jacket still cold from winter,

beard prickles unshaved.

You are so here, I wonder if you really are.

...

Today, we ate Dad’s cheesecake just-thawed. It’s thick and dense

and sugary-sweet and sugary-sick.

Scooped into those embossed pastel ramekins–each one has

iceberg tips that melt to warm gums.

We sit around our old kitchen table with scratch wrapped edges, and the

wind carves white rims on our windows. five crisp k-hhs I slurry a

warmed spoonful in my mouth, running it

from cheek to cheek. I take small gulps. It’s

barely sweet. And in the incandescence,

You promise to make it again.

about the author

Alan Yue is a 17-year-old poet from the Bay Area. A senior at Gunn High School, he splits his time between verse and improvisational music.

Wherever you find Alan, whether on stage at Stanford Coffehouse or

reading poetry collections on various benches, you can be sure that he’ll be

thinking of melodies.