Laurie Kuntz
What Passes On
For Michelle
A glazed sun sets the tin porch awning aflame.
We share a silk fan from Vietnam.
Like a child learning to subtract,
I count off days,
the pressure of my thumb blanching
each fingertip pale.
My last week in Asia --
spent in your house, surrounded by orchids
and the daily offering of joss sticks burning.
Afraid of a move back to America,
a country now more foreign than this Asia I call home,
I talk about separation, about living alone,
tell you I can't sleep.
You fan away the flies,
pour me tea, reach
for my hand and whisper,
So many who cannot sleep.
Every night, the man who binds you to Asia
bolts from dreams and you hold him
till he feels the shudder of space untangle,
till he knows that he sleeps,
not on a cement slab in a prison camp near Hanoi,
but next to you, in a bed of flowered sheets.
We own all we dread.
Nothing saves us,
except momentary grace--
an ink-blue butterfly
hovers near my glass of tea.
The wordless flap of its wings
lends comfort, then passes on.
* First published in Eleventh Muse
