You Linger Inara Cedrins

The teacher of silk painting
helped us choose brushes in Liulichang:
of the purple fur of rabbit coats in spring,
weasel hair, translucent
sheep’s wool, clear at the ends.
We stroked the tapering fullness, and I told her
how you used to tell your secrets to the chickens,
caressing them, because you knew they wouldn’t tell —
she laughed. And said there were brushes of feathers
too. At that time I still hoped to carry
your child in my belly,
tightly, like the sac of a grape.

.

I remember the way you pulsed inside me
and wake pressing to me the pillow filled with millet,
its spilled seeds sticking to my flesh. I tolerate
the way my body misses you, is reduced
like stock, a consomme becoming richer
from bones picked clean. Ah, distance.

The miles between us
are best left uncounted, wound close before unraveling
as the cocoon of a silkworm is held coiled
in secret.

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