Michelle Lin

Echo after Narcissus

1   A forest is a lake that is a home that has learned to drown. So what if the home kills me to pieces? A shadow, held steady can be worn as roof. The snail, its hardened home is an image I want to love, even if it breaks easy in my mouth. Come home and call your dogs. I will hide in your breast. Leave your clothes and I will darken a home inside of them. This, too, will smell of you. The burn of my bride feet outside the home— you drive away and I am calloused, I am slick as a clam pulling skin on skin, a home of relief. Because something as small as sand cannot stop its own bleeding. Must call home this entire world. I am burning and I breathe out and out and out. This is home. Home.   2   How heavy is this body in waiting. More than the gravity of these full rooms. If I could clear the walls of your wooden calls, pry my way back to its tender foundation, it's white clean beams. If I could hush up the bones creaking syllables of your name, dust this forsaken house sick with dust. Oh, useless broom, crooning of something more, of shadows stitched to carpet or mantle bone, of the piano in the corner with its clear set of teeth. If I could somehow clean what won't stop smiling at me. Away in the kitchen, this sink, too, is weighed— plates palm ceilings as buckets of dust, choked as your stare the night you kept cleaning, couldn't look at anything more than your own dishwater reflection. I could clear these bowls, fill them new to feed. Never mind my bones creaking away in water, frail against the bone of china. Never mind the one way left to unstop the waves. If I could clear what it was you'd dive for, if this dusty lagoon could transform anchor and moor, be the dumb trick of light. Yes, if I could clean the wretched cups and spoons, clean what's left in the hands—if my bones could only save so much. Or more— the words before you drifted away, if I could strip before they're dusted with this sick howl of vowels. Oh this clear good-bye, this clearing mirror. Porcelain so clean it shrieks with touch. Farewell, dusty cheekbone. Again, you fall to the water, reaching for something more.   3   Veiled, a moth's wings are lips wet with sun. What are we but vessels to hold the last of his voice? Its body, whistling against air, needle head of light caught between cloth and wind and whisper. What are we but vessels to hold the last of his voice? As we hover here, between the drawn sheets of our bodies, taut between wind and cloth. A moth is a peephole, and the world winks through, as we hover here, in the skin of our bodies, filaments torn so easily by teeth and love— this is a peephole, and the world winks through, wanders down an empty aisle. A familiar song low chords easily torn by teeth and love, we come loud and open into this world—what else can we say? Words wander in empty aisles. A familiar song swings low through rooms, blinding, white. This world is loud and open—what else can we say? Veiled, our lips are moth wings wet with sun, singing low through rooms, dressed in white. Drawn into a needle head of light, whistling into air.   prev - 6.3 home - next