Photo by Jan Tinneberg on UnsplashReasons for Staying
after Ocean Vuong
Because night, with its key-shaped teeth, opens me like a door.
That as a child, I was most concerned with how the sky made everything else seem too small.
That the sky is a mouth swallowing all the trees & mountains & I am its tongue.
Because when it rains the window rattles like cymbals, a quaking glass chorus.
That I stood empty & clawless under a canopy of rain, praying for it to make me new.
That my dead friend’s ghost is everywhere but his name is now spelled without vowels.
Chartreuse. Cerulean warblers. Clinquant.
Because I once loved a man who stored air in glass bottles the color of amber.
That I stole a bottle of air mistaking it for sunlight & when he left me, he said you took my breath away.
Because the poem said listen & I held my ear to it & heard my dead friend singing.
That every good poem feels like a death & a resurrection.
Because there is a bird called a secretary & I am holding all its calls.
That people are dying every day, but a stranger once told me you have beautiful hair.
That before my grandmother died, she asked who are these people who sing to me at night?
Because I kneeled on the floor outside her bedroom & pressed my ear to the door.
That my sadness is a door the wind keeps open. Even when there is no wind.
