A Grid of Stars
Edlyn Ang
(in memory, Melanie)
Today your mother dropped by, gave
some of your things to us; stared
wistful at our fashions and news
of university; clutching her coffee cup
with white, composed fingers;
her calm unhinting voice talks
of cupric blueness of Mediterranean, where
they'd just returned
from-
pausing upon the inexorable.
Steam above coffee, rising, the bright kitchen.
This gentle aftermath of closure.
Tonight I am bound for San Francisco.
On the plane, pressing my face, palms to the glass.
Takeoff is the moment of vulnerability,
where everything seems to fall
apart, a roar of lifting wheels and churning, changing air.
I watch the forsaking city as neon and
fluorescence beneath my leaving feet.
Knowing with absolute conviction
that if I were God deciding a grid of stars,
the first would never have to be elegy. |
