Illustration: Amy Yan

i miss you like a stone skips on water,

or a transfer that screams 10:30 at 12:57 louder than mother calling from home.

and in the time it took for distance to tear the embroidery threads

i’ve gone swimming with the numbers, searching for the absolute.

i wanted to tell you that it was my birthday four months ago

(don’t you remember sixteen months back)

and that on the eighteenth,

i wished on seventeen candles, one dandelion, and the same three stars

that somehow you could gift me your smile floating down the coastline,

one more time,

like things hadn’t changed.