What Is Between Us (III)
1
To love the sky between us
2
Where mine meets yours, a peak
to form a roof
3
For a year I watched the atmosphere shift over the island, so I
could know
I felt the boundaries slip and also I felt it orb
To slow an apocalypse I might spread my arms
4
How to mark negative space
The width of a stormfall
If light is scarce I will name myself in the dark
5
To pull up from the roots, the body
cannot help but find new directions
Distortion allows us to recognize
6
A person sitting on the ground with mounds of salt
charting a labyrinth to capture their grief
7
So there can be a journey home
8
My mother who gave me a lullaby, fall into a well of ghosts
My mother generous with darkness
but never how to waylay the moon
In her wisdom I slept all my rivers, wrested all
my ground until my ground
9
was neck-deep
10
At the bus stop one summer evening
Something to take you away—
11
This is how the ocean grows:
Every night I reach toward my recesses
-Jennifer Cheng