——-—My love, I can’t fathom you
nor life without the memory of you.

The preacher says there’s nothing
——-—new under the sun. I argue

——-—he forgets our forgetfulness.
For instance, my sense of recollection

is worse than many, though better than
——-—a goldfish’s, which may be a mercy

——-—bestowed unto it considering
the creature has no eyelids

& can’t blink a bad day into the dark. I fail
——-—to recall when I’m cold that I was ever a warm-

——-—blooded animal, to resummon
snow when summer reshapes

me into a puddle of sweat. Then there’s
——-—an onion’s lucid skin clinging to a knife, your indigo

——-—hair speckled with short, silver stars.
Mystery startles me every time,

& every time I get distracted
——-—by my living. I slurp at the milk

——-—& salt of oysters, forget I was once moved
by the moist sapphire of their hundred

tiny eyes, forget also how
——-—I’m afflicted with hopes

——-—I cannot survive
without hope. The latter takes the edge off

my prayers, makes a lacquered idol
——-—out of my hunger for less newsworthy tomorrows.

——-—There might be nothing novel about such
fragility. Though I do wonder if I’ll ever get used to

the sound of shattering bodies.
——-—Last night, while the wind overwhelmed

——-—the neighbor’s anemones into blooming,
I woke up anxious to retain

with what dream, what gentleness, you had
——-—once touched the temple of my head.

 

---

 

Ae Hee Lee, born in South Korea and raised in Peru, is the author of Asterism (Tupelo), selected for the 2022 Dorset Prize, and the chapbooks Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound), dear bear (Platypus), and Connotary (Bull City), which won the Frost Place chapbook competition.

 

Image: Renaat Peeters. Unsplash, 2022.