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  

Read the full chapbook