A sorry attempt to rekindle an old relationship and avoid another

Both Amelia and I stopped studying Japanese.

I didn’t know her account was hers.

We haven't talked in two years. We had no plans

but to meet at a cafe. I was

half an hour early and she, an hour late.

I passed the time: sang “Dancing Through Life” with a friend over DMs,

ambled through articles,

failed to take a good picture of the street.

The exhibition on Alice Coltrane with free harp concert

I let pass; she was sorry I did.

I insisted it was fine: “We haven’t talked in a while,”

so she ordered two cakes: “How’s life?”

and past petty matters my life was okay,

considering. She wants to research minority stress,

maybe a Masters in social work.

I remembered other friends far away,

one back home okay with growing past and faster, as was I:

we had a mutual who (for very good reasons)

could not move on, so to progress

we disavowed Mutual through what Mutual could not. So when she

brought up John I furrowed a brow.

I lost contact with him when he graduated, willing

to let John and Jocelyn and Natalie

be old pictures. She was, in any case,

the first to leave, or was left.

She asked me ways John hurt me;

I forgot the list, but out

tumbled some, without feeling. Then she launched:

“I was so hurt by John wouldn’t leave me alone

never liked John in the first place kept this to myself

because you and Jocelyn were so close

to him did you know John flirted with me?

I liked Ken at the time

and John was pursuing Elizabeth

but when Elizabeth rejected John started DMing me,”

and shakily gripping her phone,

“I literally have the DMs right here I can show you right now!

I’m sharing this with you so you can ha—“

and cut off, so I said,

“So I can see John differently.” And she,

“Yes! Did John delete his account? Good! Wait,

I found the DMs! See? John was like

I was like stop flirting with me

“John said why do you hate me

I said I don’t hate you

sent him evidence of himself—I literally have John

screenshotted he’s so good at denying anything ever happened

then he stopped inviting me to KBBQ with y’all.

Like I’ve forgiven Jocelyn and Natalie

but I’m never talking to John again I’m so much better now.

How’s Jocelyn? How’s her girlfriend are they still together? Back to John

“Natalie is way out of John’s league. I’m so sorry John hurt you

John is so weird he wants to be one of us so bad,”

and as my macchiato foam crisped

I lost track of the person sitting across.

Before, all that mattered were the ways we hurt each other

because life was still small and we, almost outsized.

They left me, or I left them.

But girl, it’s so ordinary and so stupid.

So I’m disavowing you through what you can’t.

You want to read this poem; I send you flash fiction

on the wretchedness of an unloved body. I give content warnings.

You decry John’s raving as “so superficial, so boring,”

like the other “all East Asian friend groups”

who’ve rejected you and me.

But you hate it when people pity you,

so you box one cake to have it later. I hope you eat it.

And behind as the road darkens I play Joni Mitchell’s

Hejira, meaning migration,

and when I get to the song “Amelia,” I consider

how it’s good every time we remember Amelia Earhart, she disappears.