House for the Living

by Aiden Heung

Winner, Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, selected by Diane Seuss

After saying goodbye to a country, we moved
to an apartment. To start a new life, I told him.
He knew I was lying. I knew I was lying.
We lived with too many ghosts. If only life
could be rebuilt the way a flame is conjured
from embers. Some days I woke up and fell back
onto the pillow, as if seeking
to sink into the sea. The room was beige, well-carpeted.
The window opened wide to a sullen Basilica,
whose shadow loomed large in the setting sun.
Our rented furniture had arrived earlier:
a bed, a couch, a table, two chairs, a lamp
I soon turned on, for fear the darkness
might creep in like cold fingers on our backs.
We had three days of travel behind us.
We flew across an ocean. I imagined waves
sweeping dead crustaceans onto a shore.
I reached out for his hand. He was nervous, more so
than when we feared we might not exit
customs. Sometimes it is better to be trapped
in a known past, however treacherous.
A feeling like the skin peeling off. A feeling
of amusement at the emptiness
of starting over in America. We would return
the furniture weeks later, after buying the cheapest
we could find. We replaced them one by one
like taking the insides out of an animal,
then filled it with stones, glass shards, and coal.
We told each other we would live
in a beautiful house, somewhere in the middle
of a forest but we forgot we couldn’t drive.
I needed a fairytale; he needed an excuse.
Every day the Basilica sent in crisp bells
like the snapping of branches. Every day I pulled
my body across the city, a ventriloquist’s dummy.
I started to speak English, and learned to fist-bump
with strangers, soon realized kindness
was something I needed to beg for. Still I believed
I had something to give. He offered me all his trust.
The hair on his temples started to turn gray.
We never talked about things that scared us,
but in sleep he would ask me
to hold his body the way a lamp held
its tenuous light. I never wanted to wake him.
So I sneaked out for a smoke. A stranger
gave me the fire. It was a cold day. I told her
about China. She wished me luck. The truth is
luck is a gamble at terrible odds. I always lose.
These days I needed it more than ever, more
than happiness even. She left. I tossed
my cigarette down, stubbed the fire out.
In the apartment, he turned away,
hid his sobbing. I pretended I didn’t see it.
I went out to a gas station, bought
water, ham, cheese, and bread: the only solace
I knew to offer. When back, I halted before the door,
our new door, a perfect rectangle of dark.

Aiden Heung (he/they) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town. After years of working as a traveling salesman, he recently relocated to St. Louis, USA. His poems are published in The Kenyon Review, The Australian Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, etc. His poetry debut All There Is To Lose is the winner of Levis Prize in Poetry, chosen by Ilya Kaminsky. It will be published by Four Way Books in 2026. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.