I’ve made friends
with the willow leaves outside my window.
Buds span from an outstretched hand—
They wave to me,
and we play hand games
from both sides of a barrier.
They sway, between games,
and I’m familiar with their movement.
I’ve watched before their undulation,
their careen in the breeze.
A red cardinal nestles, sometimes,
between its branches.
I watch her perch, a visiting companion.
Watch her chin lurch upwards, and she surveys—
Watch her lips open, and she whistles—
I can sing with her, her song.
Her favorite scale, her rolling vibrato.
These friends, outside,
they always return.
Such a thin division,
between my friends and me.
Their presence welcome
before the stillness of our kitchen.
In quarantine,
we distinguish shades of morning showers.
Multi-faced rain—
Each downpour, you bring a novel hue:
The white skies of misty days,
when clouds coagulate into plaster,
a lid over fogged earth.
The silhouette of trees
like stencil against
your alabaster backdrop.
The polka-dotted summer rain,
when grey splotches stain a periwinkle overhead.
Your showers freshen us—
breath under blue offer
refuge after
passing floods of your grey.
The charcoal of your
merciless days.
When we wake to drum beats
against our windows;
When we hear drips of you
invading our home
unwelcome through cracks in our rooftops;
When we search for morning
and night has left residue.
Your darkness showers into our eyes—
We hold you in our breath
until your drum beats cease
and we exhale you into stillness.
In quarantine, rain,
you join us through window screens—
your shifting moods a presence
in our isolation.
Today, I watch crimson leaves
brush against a linen sky,
shivering bristles in mist.
And I wonder
if they, too, plead for relief
or if they relish the fog
and find clear moments sweeter
after mornings like this.
No corner goes undusted.
Pace between corridors—
These four walls, a palace.
Work-zone, chef’s line,
place of rest,
place of worship.
We notice new corners.
Polish them, sterilized for our pacing.
Our calves brush the edges of days.
Mornings blend as we walk
from one room, and back again—
a timeless holster.
History inhales, and holds.
Windows are new things.
Masks for new kinds of skyfall.
Barriers between collective them,
and nuclear us.
We scrub them—
through screens, we watch a season change.
What discoveries hide in these walls?
Which lie atop counters? Which shrivel under floorboards?
Which are shrouded by custom,
our routine eyes?
Ruptured habits—
Between a door frame,
my toes catch a homebound finding:
a scratch in our porcelain.
Take note, and pass.
Glitter-like. It spreads like that. Specs translucid
cling to us, our fickle strands.
Our hands outstretched, startled.
Flecks splatter in our palms, and stick—
invisible.
Glitter under sheets—our fate embalmed in latex.
Glitter, it crusts—it smears in strokes, and glazes.
We dwindle, but move.
Apart, we persist.
Tomorrow will glisten an iridescent shade.
New artistry, forward-viewing.
My Saba’s prayer book
idles on a pedestal
of magazines and opened mail,
receipts and peanut crumbs,
its borders, embroidered,
a mantlepiece for
yesterday things.
It reclines against routine,
drapes a holy face
over coupon clippings—
And I see my Saba in its binds.
Hear his humming
swell from the pages, pressed closed.
His scar, a crease in the spine.
His smile glints in the cross-stitching.
And he soaks his perch with his prayers,
my grandfather on our kitchen table.
When pearl turns invisible,
its glisten reduced to translucence
and alabaster drips
through the porch cracks.
Dims the wooden boards
during its downfall.
Does it bring with it splinters,
the manifest brilliance?
Does it soak its route
and gather trinkets,
chilled remembrances
of grounds which it stood upon?
Patches downsize
under the morning.
Silver layers strip,
its droplets
hung beneath the shade
of the porch’s underboards.
Another manifest—
Sharp in its being,
a jagged snapshot, for now.
I will be okay.
My mother gifted me
her mantra, her syrup reprise—
Saccharine coats my fatigue,
my thoughts and slow steps,
candied by her mantra.
I will be okay.
My heels soak its words,
toes submerge between its honeyed spaces.
Knees, immoble—
I am forced to breathe,
and I breathe its sweetness.
I will be okay.
“Lean into corners,” Ma tells me,
“and cushion their peppered crevices
with syrup.”
“Taste the sharpness
bitter at the base of your throat,
but taste first the syrup,
my mantra’s sweetness.”
I will be okay.
I will be okay.
I matchmake my meaning.
Words coalesce and
test their phrases,
taste pronunciation,
bite their tongue on slanted rhymes—
Blood dyes my meaning.
Note their mingling, my words—
curious, ambiguous.
Clasping over em-dashes,
forging a single expression.
Dissusable semantics.
A construction unique to their form.
Their verse question until written
declarative,
intangible until printed—
and even.
Scribbles threaten longevity,
page tears corrupt sense
of being,
fragile art.
Thrive in your drafts,
jotted existence.
Find meaning in your deletion
if you don’t make it past
this rough couplet
this rushed conclusion.
Outside these ridges, there is blur.
Wisped irresolution, unfocused wonderings—
Prints of unknown things
fuse in my periphery,
rim my sight with inquiries,
a halo of curious colors
a glance from distinction.
Remain sideways from foresight.
Encircle me in cloudy palettes,
questions and catechisms.
Let me daydream in fog,
eye roll from focus—
a prescribed perspective—
and muse in my blindness,
the mud crusting my eyes.
This blur, a visceral framework.
A constellation—I sketch in obscurity.
Form shapes from the smears,
on canvas of cloud tufts.
My lens, a crutch.
Prosthetic. It bends beneath
the weight of my imaginings.
She leans,
hip juts in clay skirts,
a cloth cast, wrapped. Glazed domestication.
Her waist pinched in naked air,
goosebumps smoothed by artist hands
and oven heat.
Hair pleated. Braided permanence.
And her eyes cast down,
and she always remembers her
Missing.
Phantom elbows bend,
shadow fingers mingle at the torso.
Raise lilies for her motion, in memory.
Her reminiscing, an apparition.
Her imaginings, a coy thing.
Envision what was,
her fantasies. Haunt her.
Stone dreams
of fingers twitching,
arthritic pain,
palms pricked by lily stems
and sharp leaves, gripping.