![]() Rob Colgate is a Filipino-American poet from Evanston, IL. He holds a degree in psychology from Yale University and is currently pursuing his MFA in poetry with the New Writers Project at UT Austin, where he serves as the nonfiction editor for Bat City Review and is working towards a certificate in critical disability studies. His work is featured in Best New Poets 2020; his first chapbook, So Dark the Gap, was published by Tammy in March 2020 and won the 2020 ReadsRainbow Prize for poetry. You can find him at robcolgate.com. Remember These Tulips
After Sylvia Plath Back when things were good between us, Finn, I would fall asleep dreaming of my own future anxiety and how I would be able to text you: Hey, tonight is really bad— can I come over? And you would say yes and I would come over and we would be overwhelmingly together, our bodies made tangible by the activated sprinklers in the field. But tonight I cannot find even a single vein in these petals. Do you want me in your blood or not? You were so happy. I did that. I only have a future because you once told me that I do. You would always promise a silly dance together, a joke that would never end. Now—so many leftover lentils. So I keep myself busy. I count the ways the light lies on your sweatshirt draped over the porch banister. I open and close every book, every draft, every video of every boy who is happier and less anxious than me. I never wanted to distract myself. I only wanted to lay with you with my shame half-open. But your driveway was too open. I swerved around each handful of rice you spilled. You were the one who filled my tank with gas, who smeared my inclination towards you with light. I have never been so absent. I think I am in love but am asymptomatic. Every night I slept next to you I dreamt of you anyway. REM, why couldn’t we save that? He’s gone now. Promises made in the context of time are not promises. They are small hooks that catch on your skin. They are too bright in the first place. I am so hungry and you ate all my purple yams. I need to call home. I miss Rob. You are the greyhound I always bet on and you are the bus that never comes. I will use my propensity for delusion to believe that I do not miss you, that you are coming back, that we are at the museum together and the two of us become an exhibit. Glass case, be small enough so my shoulder touches his.
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