Homecoming
Tonight the streetlamp glow offers redemption if
I pretend prayer and warm air
or tomorrow if I buy allergy medicine for me
and painkillers for you and lie down on the roof. But
I’m all corralled feeling. I’m all big horses
begging to run. Dried toothpaste chalks up
the sink. It’s summer and I’m up to my knees
in saying nothing. I want
to someday see something incontrovertible. To give
you your hair ungray, teeth
unmissing. Peeling pears to slice them
wide and generous. There’s so much
the world is asking forgiveness for and
there’s so much I am asking
forgiveness for. Let’s transmute
instead. Let’s just whisper. This closed fist
inside a closed fist I can’t relinquish, rain
dripping inside my body, bone to bone. But I
forgive you. I wring my hands all up the long
walk to the foot of your bed and
you keep asking, what is it, what is
it, and I say, the open window, the warm breeze.
I pretend prayer and warm air
or tomorrow if I buy allergy medicine for me
and painkillers for you and lie down on the roof. But
I’m all corralled feeling. I’m all big horses
begging to run. Dried toothpaste chalks up
the sink. It’s summer and I’m up to my knees
in saying nothing. I want
to someday see something incontrovertible. To give
you your hair ungray, teeth
unmissing. Peeling pears to slice them
wide and generous. There’s so much
the world is asking forgiveness for and
there’s so much I am asking
forgiveness for. Let’s transmute
instead. Let’s just whisper. This closed fist
inside a closed fist I can’t relinquish, rain
dripping inside my body, bone to bone. But I
forgive you. I wring my hands all up the long
walk to the foot of your bed and
you keep asking, what is it, what is
it, and I say, the open window, the warm breeze.
J. W. Sun is a writer and dancer originally from the Mountain West of the United States. His work has appeared in Sine Theta Magazine.
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