I fall a
-sleep on the
gray sofa,
my own fog
belt/belly,
short of room
to fit both
me and your
giant red-
wood trunk, and

sleep talk think
-ing we are
in a con
-versation.

 

I don’t int
-roduce you
to any
one at the
reading be
-cause of the
swollen app
-pendices.
That’s my ex
-cuse. Sorry.

When I wake
up, there is
a golden
light, and you

look except
-ional, I
don’t know, but
there is no
light. All the
lights are on,
and we have
not spoken,
and you have
in silence

done the laun
-dry, hung it
to cry, writ
-ten the re

 

-ceipts for the
budget, booked
hotels for
marmots which
are daft fat
and cuter
groundhogs. Day
-packing your
light, quiet
miracles.

 

 

---

Stella Wong is the author of Stem (forthcoming from Princeton), Spooks, winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors’ Prize, and American Zero, selected for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize by Danez Smith. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and more.

 

 

 

Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash