the yellow paint on your bedroom walls
is the opening act for the sunlight.
the light breaks your heart every day
and you are soo open to loving.
you carried the willow stump, collected with moss
across the hay field to me
and placed it on the deck, a beloved specimen.
we pulled and plucked our boots off—
now to study each other.
i buried my head alongside you
between you and your familiar robe
while you read Eliot and we found
our selves in England,
healing for the rest of our lives.
each one of those tuesdays when we left each other
not knowing if we would have another,
it was like we were practicing dying.
we used every bit of what belonged to yesterday.
—shokan
This article appears in September 2016.
