Limen, Revachol

Xingyu Zhao

January 14, 2026

The night peels back by muddy increments.

A coin drops into the Pale, and out spits

Static, wet with snow.

 

Your absence is a precinct.

I question it daily.

It offers no statements,

Only glass, fogged.

A radiator hums low socialism.

 

Once, your voice

Spun on my ribs.

Now it scratches, loops,

Becomes the weather.

I walk the broken boulevards

Where the air smells of lead and perfume.

 

There are walls peeling.

One day, I’ll return to your side.

 

I kneel

To retrieve a lost earring,

Find memories

Shaped like an interrogation bruise.

 

I keep your letters in evidence bags.

Syntax collapses under ultraviolet.

Sentences bleeding from their mouths.

 

Dialogue options flicker.

Say you’re sorry.

Say nothing.

Lie about our bodies.

 

At dawn the river refuses reflection.

The light writes me into existence,

Or into another report.

Subject has attempted to love.

Subject has failed, but beautifully.

 

Somewhere,

Disco still flutters

Through the cracks of the whirling.

Karaoke, stuttering with grief,

Folds itself into the superhighway.

And in its final, fevered song,

I think. Perhaps this is all

That survives.