Spaces We Leave Empty
By Cathy Song
The jade slipped from my wrist
with the smoothness of water
leaving the mountains,
silk falling from a shoulder,
melon slices sliding across the tongue,
the fish returning.
The bracelet worn since my first birthday
cracked into thousand-year-old eggshells.
The sound could be heard
ringing across the water
where my mother woke in her sleep crying thief.
Her nightgown slapped in the wind
as he howled clutching his hoard.
The cultured pearls.
The bone flutes.
The peppermint disks of jade.
The clean hole
in the center, Heaven:
the spaces we left empty.
Copyright Credit: Cathy Song, “Spaces We Leave Empty” from Picture Bride. Copyright © 1983 by Cathy Song. Reprinted with the permission of Yale University Press.
Source: Picture Bride (Yale University Press, 1983)