“To Whom I Aspire” – Works by A. Sadrian

Arthur Sadrian is a student writer and novelist. He has received the Plum Tree Tavern Best of Year award for poetry, is an Iowa Young Writers’ Studio alumnus, and a top 1% seller on Amazon Kindle. In his spare time, he likes to edit for literary magazines, listen to a variety of music genres, and bike without direction. He will be attending the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 2023.

To Whom I Aspire

Yesterday we visited the Mall of America because I’m from out of town
and you reassured me that you’re still a narcissist.

Narcissist because,
like the Mall of America, you have it all
and, like the Mall of America,
you’re not afraid to display it in a big glass case
and, like the Mall of America,
we cross borders, only to venture home clinging to a fragment of what you gave us.

I’m from out of town, but that’s only part of what made the Mall of America special. The Mall of America is, itself, neither fleeting nor gatekept; rather, it pulsates with the steadfast abundance of life we seek within ourselves–cling to because leaving means we lose the three-story Macy’s and Garden of Eden food court. We yearn to engender every fulfillment under an unbroken dome.

You’re a narcissist:
you know your genius;
you know that this isn’t a love poem—
that I came from out of town and parked alongside
50,000 other cars in a temple that always has another floor.

Then we went to yours, read
Anne Sexton (who you said was crazy),
Virginia Woolf (who you said was cheated on),
and Vita Sackville West (who you deemed an inferior match to Woolf).
Their words shone through their lives, such that

all I could see was you between every line.

Glass

And what divides us if not
transparency—if not piecing

the flecked window constellations
with absence? Translucence is

rigid, sagging ball joints turned
arthritic when their chemical

arguments freeze, rush through
material phases. Translucence

is brittle, such that
zephyr’s blow scrapes

shattered tears across each
frame, and when Hera

weeps, so it follows. Now
only mud flecks riddle the

barrier between microcosms
and only sickly stray particles

drain their moisture upon
its nothingness.

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