By: Jenny Liang

It is not the chambers of the heart that hold him

captive, but the hallways of the mind. Why?

his image burning green, and blue persists.

—the face, the eyes questioning, the shape

of his head—is beyond anything I can understand.

What lessons must be learned to overcome

the final act of longing? This morning, sunlight

grasped at everything, but the wind swept.

through the streets taking things with it,

even the soul. Sometimes the curtain does not

completely fall, and the play, barely visible,

continues. This much I know. This much

the textbooks have taught us. The blind man

Cervantes built continued to see and saw far.

too much, could not accept the utter purity.

of Abstraction. But is that not our essential fault?

A tree frog croaks against the backdrop of memory,

and the cold sheets and darkened room return,

but you are not here to whisper me to sleep.

The ocean’s long-windedness offers no replacement.

for your voice, anxious the way it could be at night.

What is there to understand? Not the heart, certainly

not the heart that is so easily trained to forget.

Night after night, like the tree frog, I remind myself.

who I am, voicing what I cannot voice during the day.