but it is--
after Hozier
I’d let you look at me forever like that. The field reckless
with light. Lips quivered out of language. What to call
the awful thrill of your mouth, soaring afternoon, the eloquence
of grass struck gold and senseless. What to call warmth
as it stings. The fevers we inherit from each other. Do you trust me?
I trust you. You blink and I don’t move. Turn back. I don’t move.
Love takes its revenge against my body
: the rot is glad inside me. My tongue is ripe and still. Glass thief
in a glass house. There’s no tense for when
we are. I wander you. I claim nothing. You’re so close
you spill out of my sight. You pass through me.
We are the same rain. Glory without blood. The line of your arm
wherever it goes, you and I are so much nowhere,
and your limbs are loud as they forgive us that,
our fingers laced together are a cry thrown across the frame.
Here. Let me listen for it. Until it gets dark: your hand
that breaks the bone of summer
into my palm, says drink, your hand a word repeated
out of its meaning, your hand honey in the throat
of sickness, a sweetness so exact it burns, your hand
the way pain strikes marble—not at all—your hand
turning my throat into an hourglass, and inside it
thousands of birds migrating home, home the impossible country
you came to me from in the dark.
after Hozier
I’d let you look at me forever like that. The field reckless
with light. Lips quivered out of language. What to call
the awful thrill of your mouth, soaring afternoon, the eloquence
of grass struck gold and senseless. What to call warmth
as it stings. The fevers we inherit from each other. Do you trust me?
I trust you. You blink and I don’t move. Turn back. I don’t move.
Love takes its revenge against my body
: the rot is glad inside me. My tongue is ripe and still. Glass thief
in a glass house. There’s no tense for when
we are. I wander you. I claim nothing. You’re so close
you spill out of my sight. You pass through me.
We are the same rain. Glory without blood. The line of your arm
wherever it goes, you and I are so much nowhere,
and your limbs are loud as they forgive us that,
our fingers laced together are a cry thrown across the frame.
Here. Let me listen for it. Until it gets dark: your hand
that breaks the bone of summer
into my palm, says drink, your hand a word repeated
out of its meaning, your hand honey in the throat
of sickness, a sweetness so exact it burns, your hand
the way pain strikes marble—not at all—your hand
turning my throat into an hourglass, and inside it
thousands of birds migrating home, home the impossible country
you came to me from in the dark.
Christina Im is a Korean-American writer and undergraduate at Princeton University. A 2018 finalist for Best of the Net, she has been recognized for her work by Bennington College, Hollins University, the National YoungArts Foundation, and the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program. Her poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Adroit Journal, and The Margins, among others. In addition, her poem "Meanwhile in America" was selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in Best New Poets 2017.