ocean

I am the blunt shards
of Ocean Vuong’s sharp words,
assembled with unoriginal thought
in forlorn fractures, wounded fractals,
and other ill and mis fitting parts.

I stare at the patch of black sky
where the moon was yesterday-
the empty corner of my mind
where words used to be, words
I prided in calling my own,
Like the moon. Invisible now
Like me in this luscious city.
Pulled down by more than gravity,
the earth of my being keeps
turning. memory's axis slants
my vision, just out of reach.
always, just out. Like the butterflies.
Fluttering fluorescence around
summer flowers I cannot name,
Like my desires. A hush descends.

The music blaring between my ears
is the truce silence and I are still
negotiating. Though neither of us
has made it to the table yet. this war
is everything, and makes nothing
of us with indelible joy and cruelty.
𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳?
its rainy season. the sun blots everything.
clouds feast like vultures on the bodies
of our hopes. 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘴. in plural.
while we keep working, singularly
toward our annihilation at our own hands,
𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦.

                     And not just hands, but our
whole and wholly riddled bodies holding,
bursting out of and with, all the histories
never written, spoken or acknowledged.
Felt and shaped in out of breath whispers
exhausted from screams that don’t reach
your sound-proofed world constantly making
itself safe from, untouched by, my existence.
The shame of my silence, as of my assertions
is meant to be mine, and mine alone. So you
decree, and on some days, I refuse. But
on moonless nights like these, in the midst
of stars that are long dead, I begin to think -
How else might this end, but in a prolonged
and tired whisper. Maybe even earnest. But
not quite Eliot’s classic 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳. The weight
of the worlds, more deafening and silencing
than we choose to believe.

                                                     Meanwhile,
refuge lies in other people’s words and music.
Tearing us apart as much as putting together.
And the stitches on my body from the rips and
mends expose more of the histories kept hidden
by ineffective moisturizer and sun tan. Thankfully,
winter is approaching, these stories will be buried
in layers of thermals, keeping me forgetfully warm.
As seasons change, I transform. the butterfly goes
back into its cocoon. This present absence becomes
an absent presence, frigid, foggy, and comforting.
And in this seasonal obliteration, things can go on,
as before, as they always have, and as you never
forget to remind me, as they absolutely must.