Image by kitsananan Kuna on Adobe Stock
home was looking at you
Home is a mold, that I cast upon you
in the shape of this poem, that fits only you.
Home was the way you described every color:
hunter green, sunset orange, and midnight blue.
Home was your knees giving out when you laughed
grasping my shoulder–take me down with you.
Home was my tears on the soft of your sleeve,
all I wanted was you, and a mold built for two.
Then home was your cup of tea filling my soul,
as warmth spread through me I was born anew.
Home was your gaze and your palms to the sky,
with my hands atop yours, home was looking at you.
Home was the childhood that spilled from your lips:
a whisper? a prayer? or a wish to come true?
Now home is each lyric, each line where I linger,
as I stall my return to this world without you.
Home was the shape of our final embrace,
tell me, in another life, that home is still you.
My Apologetic Elegy
i.
we promised each other
when all this is over
i would fish
and you would watch birds.
now
when i think of nothing at all
this day
crystalized
melts away on my tongue.
ii.
if you can’t forgive me
please understand
i never meant to pass down
my love language of
abandonment.
iii.
let me explain
before you
i thought
that Icarus
was not drunk off the power of flight
but in love with the sun
as the melting wax seared his skin
he closed his eyes
and fell back
surrendering himself
to this ultimate act
of devotion.
iv.
what i mean to say is that
i think Narcissus
knelt down by the water
desperate to come home.
absorbed by the reflection of his eyes,
he yearned to settle into the impossible
alignment of body and soul.
v.
we drowned–or more accurately
i drowned us
and at the bottom of the lake
i made you rest my limp body
against the moss and silt.
vi.
i apologize that
only as you forget me
i remember myself.
My Father And The Souvenir
Kent state, March 2018,
in between your daughters endless college tours
a brief break to pay homage
to your days protesting the Vietnam War
and your fallen comrades.
When he came up to your family
friendly casual,
you joked about the old days.
Then he looks at your daughter
not from Vietnam
but close enough.
Did you get a souvenir?
This girl
on the precipice of life
a token?
a relic of a lost land?
No.
She comes at you
not as a keepsake
but for the sake of those kept away
from their land.
Her body
a memorial.
Her mind
an incinerated landscape.
Her memories
burned into the ground.
And years later she wakes up to the news
April 2024,
Columbia university threatens to call in the national guard
“This could be another Kent State” they warn.
She looks at you and asks
What will you do now?