from “Every Dress Is a Simile” by Vi Khi Nao
THE WOMAN I LOVE
The woman I love has endless
Compassion for me
Yet in the middle of the night
I left her and life for death
There was infinite discord in my soul
Infinite conjunction of pain
And, blissfully I hung my neck
From a modern day cypress
And the young emboldened leaves
Not mulched in their fortuitous youth
Screamed in tumultuous calamity
From their verdant height
Had confused me for a dying leaf
Had waited so patiently for me
Not to exfoliate from a branch in life
When my neck broke into two
In response to the weight of gravity
Against my neck
They thought an inner twig
Inside them had separated
A blade of photosynthesis from
An artery of time
Where I hung the air was endless
And youthful and the wind wore
A cape of made of northern zephyr
While flying high and low
Around my hair and teeth and feet
Making my cheeks flutter
Turning my blouse into a river
Of silk and threads
A day later when I defoliated
With the help of a tall ladder
Soft and firm hands
My lifeless body once again returned
To earth to dream of soil
Made to decompose a life
That had spent most of its
Days in grief and disbelief
I suppose time could take
A long walk with me
By the river of death
I suppose it is never
Too late to hold life’s hand
Briefly while the sun comes
Down from that mountain
Before letting her go
Into a city designed for ruins
I am so capable of loving
Life back
I am so capable
Yet I think why love?
When I could succumb
Easily to dirt which
Has all the nutrition to
Sustain a new life
A different kind of existence
Not composed entirely
Of fractured hopelessness
And summer rain made
From the thawed out
Heartbeats of winter
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