Fall Leaves, Tai Kao-Sowa

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

Tai Kao-Sowa

Old leathery men fly from far away Guiding writhing metal into the earth Drill the hole, drive the pump Gloves and soup for tough cold mornings

Trucks drive through the night Swollen and sluggish from their load Down carved highways into town Midnight radio wards off sleep

Steel pipes churn tar Workers in hazmats guide gas into tanks At the station, two for one deal on onion rings A leafblower rumbles in the street

A hundred degrees in the sun, dammit Dry leaves cartwheel over hot driveway pavement Orange vests cough fumes, spit, carry on Cash on the other side of the window, waiting

The fall breeze Slowly blows leaves Back

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

Kaitlyn Choe

Let’s take a trip on the northbound train. You’ll refuse to buy a ticket because your optimism bias is wrought with iron. I’ll slot my credit card into the faded machine because mine is flimsy at best. When I do, you’ll peek over my shoulder. You’ll make fun of me for being a scaredy cat, and when I lean back to elbow you, your hair will spill over my shoulder.

This will cause my muscles to freeze, which will make for a terrible elbow jab. You’ll ask if that’s all I’ve got, in that easy, teasing lilt of yours, the words so close to my ear. I’ll press the sticky buttons while I inform you that I am paying not only for the security of the ticket but also for the scrapbook material, and that in twenty years, when you are drinking like a fish after your second divorce, I will be there to pick up the pieces. Because, in twenty years, you will be lying on my couch, asking me what happened to our youth, and I will roll my eyes and pull out a box, and in it will be this ticket, among so many other things.

“Other things?” you’ll repeat. “Like what?”

Your voice will be quieter, as you ask this. I will invest a lot of mental effort in grabbing the ticket, still warm from the printer, and my credit card, which I will slot in the wallet you gave me for my 21st. I’ll still remember the tissue you stuffed into the bag— the way you’d sheepishly shrugged when I’d looked at the glittery, star-speckled paper.

“You tell me,” I’ll reply as I turn around, as lightly as I can. For a moment, silence will suspend itself between us anyway.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

“I don’t know. Probably the papers from my first divorce,” you’ll say eventually, your eyes somewhere away from mine, your fingers tapping the top of your iced coffee. “I wouldn’t trust myself to hold onto those.”

“This is a box for our youth, you dummy,” I’ll tell you. “Not for your adult adventures.”

You’ll drain the last of your drink then, your front teeth crushing the tip of the plastic straw. You’ll turn to toss the empty cup in the trash can behind you. If you have a response, I won’t ever know, because the train will be arriving, its rumble morphing into a roar as the metal cars, two stories high, rush towards us.

I will worry, as I always do, if, by some incredibly improbable odds, the train won’t stop. That it will just keep going, on and on, leaving us behind– or, worse, if it will stop too far away ahead, and we will run to catch up but it won’t be enough, and we will be left panting as the train restarts its journey north, without us. You will know exactly what I am thinking. You’ll swipe my chin and say, “Stop worrying. We’ll get on in time.” For a moment, I won’t know exactly what you mean.

The universe will be on your side, as it always seems to be. The doors will open, right in front of us, strangers of all shapes and sizes and smells spilling from the cavity they create. You’ll hop up the stairs first. I will follow, my hand grasping the metal railing.

You will wait until I’m with you to find our favorite seats– the ones with the small, blue tables attached.

You’ll let me have the window seat without me having to ask.

“So,” you’ll say as you slide into your chair, your bag thunking onto the floor beside you, “How many divorces do you think I’ll actually have?”

Northbound | Kaitlyn Choe

I’ll sigh, stretching my legs underneath the table. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

You’ll tell me that you do. That if the answer is more than three, I have a moral obligation to tell you so. And what will I say in return? That I just have a feeling? That I thought it was funny? That I think your heart is the biggest and flightiest thing in the world, and even if you did get married thirteen times, to thirteen different people, it wouldn’t matter, because the slices of time you’d spend with each of them would be tender and solid and sweet?

But who am I kidding. I will toss you a joke, something about how marriage isn’t for everyone. And you will toss another back to me, as if we’re two children mastering a game of catch and not college students running away from one of our last Saturdays on campus.

After Belmont, or, if we’re feeling chatty, San Mateo, the conversation will slow to a stop. You’ll pull out a book from your bag, some old novel for class, and I will listen to music. By Millbrae, you’ll have given up on your book and settled for stealing my left earbud. I will act nonchalant about this. It will feel like a form of deceit. The whole time your breathing slows, I will stare out the window, watching the world around us change. The buildings and the people and the trees.

By the time we get to the city, you’ll be fast asleep. I will nudge you gently, tell you it’s time to go, and you’ll nod, rubbing your eyes and grabbing your bag and stumbling into the aisle. I will follow you, the more steady one this time.

“We’re here,” you’ll say when our feet are flat against the platform. Around us, businessmen in suits and commuters holding their bikes and mothers with their children and college students just like us will be moving towards the exit. You’ll grin as you say those two words.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2022

“We’re here,” I’ll repeat. And although your relentless optimism is not infectious, your smile is, because I’ll be grinning, too.

Let’s take a trip on the northbound train– who knows where we’ll go.

Maybe we’ll be the tourists we swore someday we would be. Maybe we’ll walk the Golden Gate Bridge. Maybe you’ll insist we walk the whole length of the Golden Gate Bridge, even though the fog and all its insulated chill will have long since burned off, even though we’ve almost been run over by three bikers, even though I hate many things and one of them is walking long distances, to which you will argue the Golden Gate Bridge is not long, it is 1.7 miles, a fact you’d prepared for this very moment.

But even as we argue, you’ll have that look in your eyes, the look I am never quite prepared for. And when you finally let that look travel down your throat, into your mouth, and then off the tip of your tongue, and you ask me if it’s really okay– because we can stop, you remind me, gently, we can always go back– I will say: No. No, let’s keep going.

Let’s keep going. And when we slow down, when that familiar dull ache blooms in my ankles, your hand will briefly touch the small of my back. I will not tell you this, but I will think, briefly, ridiculously, that if I could move through the world like this, with your palm supporting the base of my treacherous spine, I could go anywhere.

When we finally make it to the end, you’ll buy me a magnet, which you know I will love, and I will force you to take a picture, which I know you will hate. You’ll insist we take it together or not at all, the ultimatum so silly and so serious all at once. When I concede, you will snatch my phone out of my hands and snap a couple shots quickly from overhead. I will think that’ll be the end of it, but you will surprise me, and ask some nearby tourists if they can take some more of us. Afterward, when we are on the bus to Chinatown for pork buns, I will look through the

Northbound | Kaitlyn Choe

photos and hate how I look in the vast majority of them. But there will be one where you’re making a silly face, and I am laughing. I will hate how I look in this one too– the bunched double chin under the curve of my lips– but it will be coupled by a knowledge that I will never delete it. That someday I will look back at this picture and the first thing I will notice will not be the bloat in my face but the way you made me feel.

Let’s take a trip on the northbound train. And when the trip is over– when we have to return home– neither of us will address how fast time is passing. Instead, you’ll rest your head against my shoulder, and I will adjust my body automatically to fit better against yours. Eventually, your hand will find mine. I won’t tell you what this means to me. The endings are all so close, anyway.

And when you look at me, as we’re pulling into our station, and say, “How did we get here already?” for once, I will know exactly what you mean.

Domenica Diego Rafael Pérez