Traces
A country left a scar on my palm
in the shape of a chrysanthemum. In quiet moments,
I study this blemish-petals unfold,
my wide past blossoms wider.
Years ago, on that still afternoon,
a dank breeze lifted the shadowed light
in the room where you lay. Outside, the sun
heightened its noon tincture. And, in a blank fragment
of sky, herons matted the horizon shading
our last hours with a gray silt.
I touched my lips to your lips, dampened your brow
with the fragrance of lavender, and my fingertips mimicked
the passage of those birds. I held fever's rage at bay--
though it bucked and stung.
And each time you spoke,
darkness rolled in your voice.
I am perfect now you said.
I glimpsed a secret harbor in your eyes
as an unknown coastline shifted and stretched
out its arms to you. Clockwork ships
rotated: first west, then east. Your body blushed
and the immense quay upon which I stood,
in the silence of that room, paled into dust.
I lay my hand over your chest
like an exhausted rower
dropping oars into the tide to wait
and to drift. I believe it was my heart
that pierced my hand that day.
It grappled and rose, a thorny callus seamed
from the splinters of that same rower's oar. Who knows why
one is left on the other shore.