紅燒肉 and Apple
Suddenly,
winter breaks through the window barking
in the den of night trolling for bite
and I am up and about and cannot outwit its pursuit
as it pries apart my bones from the fat caging my heart and sleep
all the while
you were an ocean and eleven time zones away,
awakening.
Long is the day in search of words and warmth.
Long the line that measures the notebook blue-spaced white between us.
Later,
like a black branch bowed beneath the tug of all that hibernal wind,
I sniff out food and recipes that will warm and wind me down
to earth the way breeze from the sea settles 九份 cool longing,
downward like rust and ore and peanut-braised creme.
And I find, in the algebra of 紅燒肉 and maple and apple, your voice
and we were one
though you were an ocean and eleven time zones away,
scootering off to sleep.
Short is the night of making rhyme from beast.
Short is the space between the syllables of your name and my cutlery.
Then,
mark the wind and the minnows teething at our ankles and heart,
mark the way the fork fell and the fat splattered and stained my shirt.
If only they were your accented words perched elliptical upon your lips
as lentil and laughter and letting-go.
When I dispatch the winter with meal,
I race toward you and wondering:
who triangulates an ocean and eleven time zones?
The heart and the stomach know neither distance nor spaced conundrum.
Thus, from all that tribometry,
to you, even in winter, full-bellied,
I wobble and space my hope toward home.
