There is nothing but empty space
behind your eyes; the same
Empty substances floating above your half-filled
glass of water. You bring it to your lips
and sighed. O you said and put the glass down,
making ripples with your breath. You said: this is
too much for a woman to hope.
I was busy dissecting your eyes under the lights. Your pupils,
heavy curtains draped over a stage where a single torch is burning.
Behind which a long corridor of shadows, a place where
we might have met before this life: two eyeless cave creatures
drawn to each other by scent; a darkness that absolves
the flesh and dissolves remembrance. Now your body is difficultly
poised between the kitchen table and four chairs,
cutting across the air and the water like a disfigured
javelin, writhing for its old buoyancy, only to crush
forehead first into my palm.
Oh, you breathed. The gentle hills beneath your eyelids
toppled over, making river valleys of the space between
my fingers. This is too much for a woman to hope.
Peihe Feng is a student poet from Guangzhou, China. She has published a prose collection in Chinese and her English poems are published or forthcoming in Thimble, Gyroscope Review, and Rundelania, among others. She likes gardening on the balcony with her cat.
