by Pamela Yuen
I am at home folding laundry when I decide it is time
to cut your conduit to god.
It’s the truth in frayed jeans. A grey sock with a hole
in the toe. I pick some mealy Kleenex
from a still damp pocket and ba-boom. It is like
we are there again. That very first time
I made you whole. Your insistent pleading.
A reach between my splayed knees.
Just a teensy little piece. Something wrenched
as a diamond from the deep
folds of me to be shoved, smuggled up the roiling
parts of you. Across town, I feel it
unraveling. The sharp snap of severance,
a plastic poncho ripping
open in the rain. Your bare chest all dolphin-
skin glistens smooth to the camera,
which cuts to the distant roar of the Azores.
To a scarred blue whale who is done growing old.
She sinks to some ancient exhaustion. The ragged
cosmos at its closing. Now—
If you watch, if you are quiet: If you hold
very still at the bottom of this next shallow breath:
A blackhole quivers. Stop motion shudder. Then
the whole salty weight of the universe collapses.
And just like that. We are done. It is over.
There she goes, gently soaring.
PAMELA YUEN is a poet descended from Hong Kong migrants. She is the winner of the 2021 Brooklin Poetry Society Contest, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brickyard, the Fiddlehead and Savant-Garde. She serves on the executive committee of the Canadian Authors Association–Toronto Branch. Visit her on Twitter: @peameala
Close-Up can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 4.2.
