Poetry by J.N.

Edited by Leyna Le Hoang

I thought freedom was the open sea

But a boat that takes me further adrift from you is no home.

No light dwells here.

The more time I’ve spent from you,

The less I remember your voice,

And the more I’ve had to fight to know my own.

Excuses flow easily to my lips

In place of you.

Though I wish to bottle some of your divinity

Sometimes I cannot stand your blinding light.

I struggle to keep close enough to catch glimpses

In my conversations with my betters

Knowing it is not you who is elusive,

But me whose sight atrophied

The day I abandoned you.

I write down scattered words and definitions

In a frantic effort to preserve

The sea foam that’s already escaping my fingertips.

These whispers of memories are less than I deserve.

I play the songs my parents used to sing

In my bedroom to practice these clumsy movements,

To mold my tongue to your shape.

You taste sharp and rigid,

For this is not a welcome visit home but another labor to be overcome.

As endless as these trials are, higher still is the tower of my regret.

I replay your voice trying to catch every subtle difference

As if I could etch it into the skin on my scalp, as if doing so would prove my devotedness.

You resonate through my bones,

Like the image of my mother in a yellow dress beside the karaoke machine

In the afternoon glow.

My essence is of you.

I claim you, my soul, in the most selfish and wretched way a person can own a thing,

In the only way I know how to love.

The strings of you that are left are mine to sew together.

I reach for you with raw, open hands and stinging eyes.

Upon the threshold of your lotus-lined altar,

Kneels a lost soul seeking reconciliation.

I’d pray for forgiveness if only I had the words.