VERA K YUEN
cw – suicide, mental health issues, imagery on grief
I Fill In A Questionnaire At My Shrink’s Office
For A.C.
1) In the past month , how often have you
blindly deciphered strangers’ faces/ searching for the two years two months & 19 days of loss/ your grin wide like a banana split/ your ruffled black hair/ freshly cut because you hated the ponytail/ rifled through drawers/ having notebooks/ cards reopening like scabs/ laid in a room plunged into dark ink/ not trusting daylight/ because it meant that i was awake again/ remembering how/ staff wheeled you in for intake that july/ how you looked/ how i looked/ in that stupid hoodie/ not that it could shield me from the ward a.c./ white walls uniform like a shirt hem/ one look was all it took for us to click/ partners in crime/ switching “prison” lunches with you because you were perpetually hungry/ i wasn’t/ creating unnecessary havoc when we got bored napping or watching tv/ doctor saying: do you know why you’re here/ me sitting in place/ deadpanned/ thinking/ here it goes again/ what else could i do/ ayyy/ just two kids too blue for school/ feeling the side effects already.
a. Has the yearning been disrupting your daily life
every day wishing i could put you back together/ some patchwork doll/ something i could call mine/ this emptiness/ my lifeline/ there is a reason why pain is measured in volts/ why electricity can make the dead come alive again/ albeit in incremental jerks/ not trying to be morbid/ i’m occupying this purgatory alone/ bank vault/ why are vaults vaults/ once you pushed through the turnstile/ i knew i couldn’t follow anymore/ locked from the outside/ barrier.
b. How much do you feel cut off from other people
since you died/ the days dismembered themselves/ i couldn’t walk a straight line/ even though i tried/ i began to float/ mourning having the opposite effect of sink/ another morning ritual/ people just buoy heads bobbing about/ at first: here grab hold of me/
how old was she/ oh my god are you alright/ then beginning to distance themselves/ flustered: i uh well/ my face prying open a smile/ easier to pretend than explain.
c. Do you feel uneasy moving on
do i feel uneasy walking out the door naked/ is that how glass frogs feel/ vulnerable/ all vital organs visible/ if life is a slow bruise fading over time/ what is bereavement/ phantom limb/ inability to time travel/ baby teeth falling out/ grief has many landscapes/ one day tundra/ one day marshland/ forest/ ocean/ mountain/ one day my boots will unstick.
d. What do you think the future holds
without you/ i haven’t forgotten the day/ just 16/ you mistook fled for ledge/ even writing this/ i feel vulgar like i’ve gotten you all wrong/ your story can’t be right/ am i doing you a disservice/ where’s the arc/ the happy ending/ all left a broken hallelujah/ a tape i wind close to my heart/ time after time/ a time-lapse of you breathing again/ living again.
Vera K Yuen is an emerging poet residing in London, where she is an undergraduate at Royal Holloway, University of London. Due to her diverse upbringing in Hong Kong and the West, she is interested in writing about culture, change and transformation in both internal and external worlds. She has previously attended Ellipsis Writing Online Workshops in Fiction and Poetry and most recently won The Charles Causley International Poetry Competition 2022. In her free time, she is a thespian and an avid cruciverbalist.