You're waiting for her.
It's nearly 5 in the morning.
The sun is loosening
night's hard-tucked edges.
That time when the stars run
out of breath.
It is such a long way
to travel. A beacon after
everything is gone. Star gazing is nothing
but standing at a wake,
listening to light's elegy.
Your eldest daughter, getting out
of a car that rolls away too quickly.
Shadow stains the creases of her eyes.
You walk into the house,
make tea. You are both
so tired.
You watch her drink, carefully,
her worn mouth
working around its silences.
She is still the sum
of your heart. And you,
you are nothing but
a poor astrologist,
reading the constellations
of her face, over and over
trying to find yourself
in that lost light.
About this Poem
Taken from Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang's 2013 book Status Update, a collection of epigraph poems in response to Facebook updates.
