Today's poem is by Grace H. Zhou

Wake
        for nainai

Here, the packed balconies on Market Street, rusted carcass of lawn chair and over-sunned aloes blooming like anemones.

There, your balcony full of green things, celtuce, celery, your hands on the wrinkled skins of vegetal shapes.

Here, I do not sleep. Phone to ear, I hold vigil to my mother's voice smoothing your silk robes, your white chrysanthemum quilt.

There, you do not wake when they give you
to the fire. Your son holds up three pieces of you, ulna, rib, phalanges—fragments—proclaiming:

from head to toe, she is whole.

Here in the night, I want to be a small seed,
my child-body eased back to sleep
there again at your broad-leaved side,
your fingers tracing, connecting my scattered limbs.

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Copyright © 2024 Grace H. Zhou All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission