Bad Perfume is Annoying for the Heartbroken; Diary of June 32nd, 2091 by Yanzhi Huo

Bad Perfume Is Annoying for the Heartbroken

Like bad perfume the loneliness lingers

Her soulmates - fictional characters;

Under a wisteria, she counted to seven

“Verdant angels, take me to heaven”

Or anywhere but here

Amusement park lights, roller coasters

His and her stories, screaming - loyal lovers!

Euphoria is annoying for the heartbroken

Like bad perfume.

The sun of the party is that dangling chandelier

Her treasured lullaby was his traitorous whisper

The pulled trigger shook the hill as the sun fell

A last glance silently mouths, fare thee well!

The gunpowder was bitter

Like bad perfume.

Diary of June 32nd, 2091

I was wandering on the streets on the eighth day of the week,

When I saw my friend Elena

In her brand-new Nike Air Force

She was standing next to a crowd

And I heard someone yell, “It’s their mistake!”

Therefore I hurried to see what was happening.

It was my first time seeing an arrest happening,

I’ve never been as intrigued as now in weeks;

While entering the crowd I stepped on someone by mistake,

And from the “Ouch!” I recognized it was Elena

that I stepped on, who looked different in the crowd

with the siren’s lights flashing and the banners that read, “Police Force”

An officer impatiently approached us and forced

the watchers to move now that a crime was happening

He said, “you people don’t work, you just crowd

here to see the unfortunate, 25 hours a day, 8 days a week!”

I know he meant to scare us away but I saw Elena

staying where she stood, so I guess staying is not a mistake

Seven decades later I now see how we always tend to mistake

imitation of the majority to not be a mistake as if obedience through force

is a rightful power; so I stood proudly with Elena.

But decades back I wasn’t thinking, I focused on what’s happening

I had no school, it was the last day of the week

And perhaps people thought the same, so the crowd

instead of shrinking remained as raucous as a crowd

Again someone yelled, “It must have been a mistake!”

A big-beard man counterattacked, “No one has seen him for weeks!”

A younger voice charmed in, “All this would yield is a forced

confession, let the suspect explain why it’s happening!”

I turned my head to see the younger voice was Elena’s.

But the voice was not solely Elena’s.

It came from an echo of the entire crowd

And those whom I justified everything happening

throughout my ages upon – mankind’s greatest mistake.

The arrest of the man having an affair with the bakery lady forces

him to ditch love, unfortunately on the eighth day of the week

To love and not love, both painful mistakes

Assuming everything happening is just by natural force,

Elena and I left the crowd, looking forward to the next week.

Author Bio: Yanzhi Huo is a Gen Z poet with a strong passion for writing. She was born and raised in Beijing, China, and she is also a senior in high school. As an ardent reader, astrology lover, and folklore believer, Yanzhi finds inner peace in creating poetry and constantly finds inspirations in high school life, the mid-summer sky, and beyond.