How to photograph the heart
by Christine Klocek-Lim
How rain arrives
This morning you called
long before the sky slipped
on her sunrise shirt:
early stars blinked quietly
the way a heart beats
beneath the covers of sleep.
When the phone rang
the whole house
seized awake.
She died in the night,
was the first thing you said.
I listened to you describe
her fall, nodded my grief
into a phone gone suddenly
hard and cold.
You didn’t hear her go.
You couldn’t have known
how you’d sewn guilt
into your end of the conversation,
scratchy and strange the way
a mended sheet rubs
on a bare foot at dawn.
By the time my bed was made,
clouds shrouded the sky’s face.
When I started the car,
rain had already stained
the road dark and wet.
Table of Contents
i — rain
How to photograph the heart
How spring arrives
The anatomy of birds
Strange violet behind trees
ii — fragile
Fragile
Sakura
Learning to Speak American
Sweet Bread
The conversation
Into the quiet
Inheritance
iii — beloved
Twenty-year love poem
Dissolution
Naked Tea
Dearly Beloved
How to be forever
My heart beats against the ground
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The Lives You Touch Publications
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