KAYLEE YOUNG-EUN JEONG
Second Date
Let’s do it again, except for the part
where I threw up; it was fun,
except for the part where you had a name
and I had to say it out loud
before swallowing it. I had such a good time
at the museum and then the cemetery,
we kissed in front of so many dead things
and that one song you hate kept playing
but it’s Friday, I’m allowed
to love you, I’m allowed to scream
about this hand in my hand,
I’m allowed to wear it like a fucked-up tattoo
I still love and paid the full price for
even though you’re still in love with one boy
and sixteen different girls. Even though I know
how to say no now, but I couldn’t do that to you
now could I, baby, sweetheart.
I know bus drivers are allowed to kill
three people a year. I know this isn’t just a bus
I’m driving. I know you’re not a big statue
architecture guy, but see that marble column over there
—yeah, it says it once stood eighteen feet high
in some Greek dude’s temple oh if only
we had met for the first time wearing white
sheets. This could mean Ancient Greece,
or Halloween (you said you’d love me
with only two holes cut out for my eyes)
or the hospital where my brother was born,
where my best friend died, where I asked
my life to marry me and it said
can I get back to you? where I spread my legs
and cried not because some boy’s teeth fucked me
up but because I didn’t know bruises came
in yellow and until then I thought I knew everything
there was to know; in the bathroom mirror
I had never looked so beautiful as I did
in my shitty blue gown.
I will be honest with you
the way you are honest to the cop
when you’re fighting many small fights
with the boy you love and all you wanna do is
go the fuck home, man, I just wanna go home
I love you the way light loves distance
the way Buddy Garrity loves football
the way grass loves a used condom
the way Cellino loves Barnes the way all injury lawyers
love eight and zero. The way white men love themselves
with all of God’s heart and sing about it
on K-LOVE Live, I’m coming as I am,
the only way I can, I kno-o-oow
You want my heart. And this is the last one:
the way we make things nicer for our kids;
Don’t feed a fed horse, two birds,
one scone, they hate the hiccups but love the feeling
of knowing someone is thinking of them;
this is the science of love, the exact science of love
where our diaphragms try and fail
to jump out of our stomachs and tell us
to give our life away. And if we do
you will sleep on the old couch
in our living room. I will dress conservatively.
I will say I’m going to plant sunflowers
then run out of time running out of subways
and doctors’ offices and outstanding charges
until we have a drink and think
What have we become? and then, What have we become?
But in the industry, this is a success story: our tombstone
will have only our names printed next to each other
like a blessing to all those diehard kids who’ll kiss
on top of it. They don’t know how to love
and never will and that’s the kicker. I love you; it is never enough.
Previously published in Diode Poetry Journal
“What is love?” is what this poem is asking. And it’s a beautiful question complimented by a wonderful poem. This poem exquisitely takes us through a life of someone who has loved, has lost, and is continually trying to understand what it means to love someone. The poem is funny. It’s sad. It’s heartwarming. It’s a life.
— Luther Hughes, 2022 Poetry Contest Judge
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong is a Korean American writer from Portland, Oregon, currently studying at Columbia University. A 2019 Best of the Net finalist in poetry, her work has been featured in BOAAT, diode, Hyphen, and Hunger Mountain, among others.