Conan Tan: “Starting Point”
It starts with him. It’s your first time
kissing another man & suddenly
you’re a boy again, you’re so much
lighter in his arms & he smells
like sunrise, he knows to hold you
until you believe him, he’s singing
your favourite Frank Ocean song
(Pink + White) & you’re listening
to him breathe & even the way
he breathes is beautiful, god
he’s beautiful & slipping under
you, you’re sleeping into morning
now & he’s making you pancakes,
eating the maple from your hands
& god he’s beautiful even with his
mouth full while you’re wearing
nothing but his name which belongs
next to I do & you do & he wants to
start a life with you because that’s
when he can love you enough
to stop loving you right. So really
the story starts with a fist, not quite
as hard as the blow, punch, sock
to the gut, starts with him & apology
pancakes, the flour scooped as a boy
would a snowflake or a bubble which is
more than another man could ever
hold you. It starts with reaching into
your belly’s cave & you’d rather it
jammed than empty because he’s kind
enough to never aim at your eyes &
you count that as a blessing. These days
you need more blessings so you see
the boy in him, see through the window
of his briefs & he’s kissing you as if he
remembers you are there. So really
it starts with how beautiful he is
hitting you, starts with the aftercare
when you’re in the shower, your hair
caught in the drain’s mouth &
you’re soaked red, washing yourself
clean to be dirtied again. Or maybe
there was no start, maybe it was just
you two stuck together in fresh starts,
how he held you until you believed him
because you’d rather be loved than
wanted. Because the starting point
doesn’t matter when all roads lead you
home where you’re a boy again
& so much lighter in the chair’s arms
the night you started there from
the wrist & ended up at the carotid,
you beautiful boy, you beautiful boy.
* This poem adapts a line from Danez Smith's “self-portrait as ’90s R&B video”.
Conan Tan is a queer Singaporean Chinese poet. He is the winner of the 2024 Martin Starkie Prize, Singapore’s 2022 National Poetry Competition, and a finalist in the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize and the 2025 Frontier Poetry Hurt and Healing Prize. He has received support from various organizations including Sing Lit Station, the Transylvania County Library Foundation, and the Barbican Centre as a 2025 Barbican Young Poet. His poems appear in Nashville Review, Cincinnati Review, Rattle, Passages North, Salt Hill, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. conantan.com.
