alyssa’s Reviews > Water > Status Update

“When I leave this body,
people will ask—
what did he do with his life?

I knew you, beloved.
That was enough.”

“You tore open my heart.
Now it shines with a new luster.”

“When the sun and moon set, they climb another sky.
When you see me going down, see me rising.
A bucket disappears in the well and comes up full.
A seed is buried in the ground.
A flower sprouts.
Why imagine another fate for the seed of the human soul?”

“You play the strings of my heart.
You play a new chord—
light of mine, love of mine, eyes of mine—
you are music-the melodies, the fade-out, and the memory of it all.
Each breath with you, a new note, a new color.
Every chord you strum lifts a curtain from my eyes, waking me from oblivion, from all my forgetting.”

“This seam might hold
This seam might split.
I give my heart anyway.
Separation might tear my robe to shreds.
His scissors might wound me—
I know. I give my heart anyway.”

“You show your face, your flushed face,
and stones spin with joy.
(…)
When I see your beauty, when I see your virtue,
I don’t need those two or three hanging lanterns,
I don’t need the moon.
The old rusty heavens are no mirror for your face.
You breathe in, you exhale, and from the tied up, tightfisted world, a new world is born.”