By Donna Tang
I.
The grief came as a fragment
shared over the phone,
one month after the fact.
She’s dead already, you say,
unceremoniously passing along
the husk of your sorrow.
Even in mourning your throat
stifles the pain; your bridled jaw
metes out each careful word.
II.
The news is wrapped in sorrow
-white linen. It lives on the shelf
until I know what to do with it.
We cannot embrace. Even without
distance, we cannot embrace.
Just wanted to let you know.
I cradle it often, feel its soft pulse,
my share of mother-made dust.
It lives on a shelf even now.
III.
Incense sticks in hand,
blur of sweet memory,
swallow me whole.
Supplication for ash,
blink of ember eyelid,
swallow me whole.
Space behind striated lips,
damp of opened earth,
mercifully swallow me whole.
IV.
Plucked from the altar,
it surrenders its last remaining
leaf to the ground.
Digging with your thumb,
you break its skin, cleave flesh
in plumes of citrus oil.
Take. Eat. A prayer breaks
the silence that keeps us whole.
We pry each sacred piece apart.
Donna Tang is a Việt American poet based in Los Angeles, California. Their work has appeared in Little Patuxent Review and Cotton Xenomorph.