Dear P.
  XII

When you fall onto the floor, your cry
sounds like a light bulb as it pulses on.
Your wail sticks to me. I fail to hear the
people dying. Or the dog crying. Or the
seizures that light up a body. You are my
seizure, a blowtorch that spouts fire, then
laughter, then fire. You take me by force, you
are a sudden occurrence. I ask the sky for
help, but it just gives me the next house. I
ask the fig tree for help, but it just gives me
its oblong shape. When I reach for its body,
it just wrinkles more. I turn to an old vine
that knows how to wean light and rain,
how to take lightning's metal into its petals.

Copyright © 2009 Victoria Chang All rights reserved
from Fourteen Hills
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission