Staceyann Chin

In the temple of my forgiveness...

...For the hours

she writes on a box filled with events
occurrences that mark the time we spent

moving from hope

to disappointment

to places we have yet to name

Alone and I are friends again. I am beginning to think it is my default. My way to be when nothing pushes against me. My way to be when I am. Or not. One never knows what makes the slim tick of an elbow move outward from the body

silly bone that it is
fragile but necessary

slow smoldering under the Tuscan story of some white woman and a villa there
my brother lives in Tirol

and I am here in Crown Heights
missing my sister in Cologne

my grandmother in Jamaica
I still get emails from Stockholm

never been to China
but a girl writes me from there

down the crazy stair I go
one step
not two

marking time to the dark quiet of your hair and what it felt like
my hand dividing
the knots

I think I am going to stop falling
in love

love has a funny way of shifting
just when I decide to fall

drop me on the head
I be
breaking shit I had no idea
I had

there is no more shit to break motherfuckers!!

I refuse to shatter anymore
and all that is wild talk in the brutality
of your absence

her absence
merges names
faces/fury
frailty cracks into mirrors reflecting the myriad of hip bones

I have loved too
many hips
ankles/wrists/shins/shoulders

I should have loved less
bodies
less parts

should have given her less
of my parts
presented as purpose

pleaser that I am

Asante
says
pleasers are people too

and the road winds wicked toward
treachery

betrayal
broken words uttered

on a phone from far away
futile
fluttering

flags flipped flapping in the crazy wind of you
thrashing against

the way you
thought you loved me

love is something strange
some strange
strangle of small deaths

detangling
dangling from you
details forgetting the way I like cranberries and almonds
because of you

forgetting the way you like
my lips
are clouds you said
and your fingers are smaller than one would expect

it's the details
the tiny stroke of brush against canvas

against throat
against voice

against silence
against the unquiet

the narrow of your bed
the spread of mine

the hair's breath
of large insect on glass

the memories reflected in me
in you

in what we were meant to be
can you still see me

through all these layers projected
outward

me pulling inward away from your pencils
your mother

your monkeys
lying limp on this uneven floor

can you still see me breathing?

Posted by staceyann at March 23, 2004 09:06 AM