Dust Machine - Tina Mei ‘23
I wanted to experiment with using a messy material to create something precise. In this case, I used soft pastels to draw a circuit board. I hoped that the soft material would make the rigid technology look softer.
Oh, Talia
I fell in love with the girl at my science camp.
I could not tell you her last name, but
she has short tawny brown hair,
rosebud cheeks,
and a crooked smile
that always made my hands sweat.
She wore a snapback and flannel button-ups,
blue jean overalls, and clay rainbow earrings.
One day we visited a river.
She knelt down in the creek,
dunked a bucket under the surface,
pulled up silt and clear water.
My jaw sat slack while she explained to me
what turbidity was.
I already knew, but I didn’t stop her
because I loved hearing her speak.
She was the most intelligent girl I had ever met,
and while talking with her
I didn’t feel the need to prove my own worth.
I was too overcome by awe.
Her voice felt like lying in a hammock under a shady tree,
tasted like honey from a vintage spoon.
I would have given anything to hold her,
run my thumb across her cheekbone,
or feel my hand rise and fall against her chest as she breathed.
But I could never touch her.
I was too afraid that if I did,
she would feel how I shook every time she was near me.
On the last night, she wore a linen dress with blue stripes.
She said she felt stupid.
I said I feel like an ant
in your garden.
You
are the garden.
So vast and too full for me,
such a small thing,
to see fully
even in a thousand lifetimes.
I am a worker bee
and you are the entire hive.
I do not understand how you function,
but I do know that I’d like to be a part of it.
You are a forest,
and I am sitting at the base of a tree,
wishing desperately that I could be one of your saplings.
Or at least that’s what I wanted to say.
Really, all I could manage was
“You look beautiful.”
On the last night
we pulled our mattresses out of our dorms,
made a giant bed on the floor.
She and I lay side by side
and even though everyone else had fallen asleep,
we stared at the ceiling together,
passing my phone back and forth,
answering the 36 questions that lead to love.
I prayed to that ceiling.
I begged the stars that it would work.
But in the morning,
I woke up before the sunrise,
turned to look at her face one last time.
It hurt to breathe,
but I exhaled anyway.
On the last night I wrote her a love poem
and this is what it said:
Know that while writing this,
I caught my tears in my palm,
thumbed them to my lips to remember
what this feeling tastes like.
But a drop fell through the cracks between my fingers,
so when you read these words,
know that you take home more than just the memory of me,
tearstained,
warped around the edges.
Know that though I don’t intend this to be a love poem,
I think that it might be.
Know that 2,706 miles away,
a girl will be sitting in her bed,
writing poetry about this night,
tasting the salt of her tears,
remembering you.
This poem was a way for me to get through falling in love with a girl who lives on the other side of the country. Saying goodbye to everyone I met at that camp was really hard because I felt closer to them than a lot of people with whom I've been friends since middle school. This girl was especially hard to say goodbye to, and even though we still talk, I miss her a lot.