Chloe Martinez

Heads


We are walking and he stops, then with

excruciating care and barely-balance bends

down—suspense is about time, suspension

is about space—and turns a fallen penny from tails


to heads. He is leaving some

luck for a stranger. He is leaving. 

Some luck. I can’t suss out

what happens next. To sustain is also


to suffer. One meaning of sclerosis is excessive 

resistance to change. All the way home, taxi 

to train, train to airport, and wherever I

walk, they wink at me from below: 


copper pennies. Suspiro in the first person, present. 

In the infinitive, which implies (falsely) a kind of

timelessness or even hope, suspirare, 

which means not to breathe, but to sigh.

---

Plumeria


Late nights in grad school, we argued 
over Sanskrit grammar in the 24-hour coffee shop

and you made me promise
we’d go to India together someday. 

*

When you lived in Bangkok, I flew from Delhi 
to visit you, taking ferries around town

while you were at work, tasting my first pomelo. 
We went to gilded temples, and I’d stand 

before a sleeping buddha the size of a room 
and just breathe, while you (grin, shrug) went off 

to find some monks and ask them 
the most difficult questions. 

We ate in roadside tent restaurants. The food 
was amazing. I was shocked to be able to eat

and not get sick. India had made me
so cautious. You ate meat and potatoes

as you did everywhere. I wondered about going
to Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat. 

You said, let’s go. I said no, it’s too much, 
next time. 

*

In my defense: you were so unreasonable 
and determined, I could never imagine 

anything getting in your way. 
I was not alone in this misconception. 

*

I ate as many pomelos as I could, 
flew back to Delhi. You 

kept traveling: to Japan, Mexico, 
Ohio, Germany. I went to Vienna 

and Vietnam; moved to Philly 
and back to California.

*

I visualize the trip we never took: 
me sighing, writing a poem, and you 

making dangerous friends, dragging me along. 
My instinct for self-preservation

and yours for preserving nothing, not even the self: 
a good combination on the road. 

We would have gotten sick, so sick on street food, 
but assuming we survived, 

each of us would have seen things 
that neither could see alone. 

*

The last time we traveled together, 
I met you in Denver, a city 

I will now always hate. 
We went from one dispensary to the next, 

looking for the only type of cream 
that soothed your constant 

muscle pain. In the car rides
from place to place, you talked incessantly

about the cream. Which is to say, about the pain.
You died in Ohio. I was not there.

*

Twice I booked flights to visit your grave, 
twice canceled them. The pandemic 

kept happening. I visualized 
being there. I was not there. 

*

In my head you forgive me, 
or don’t, depending on the day.

*

I plant a tree. My kids name it after you.
Let’s go water Michael, we say.

Some days you point a single leaf at me
and I think, you’re giving me 

the finger again. But some days 
you bloom hot pink 

and I walk around repeating it— 
plumeria—as if I’ve made you

another body. Another name.



 

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From the Author: I lost my friend Michael in the summer of 2021. I think about him all the time. Please visit www.als.org to learn more about the devastating disease known as ALS, or to make a donation.

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