| Her
Blessed am I.
I have a link,
a grasp on love
through Cybele. Once,
I showed her a gooey mud pie
in a dinted tin camping pan.
Claiming it was rich dark chocolate,
I feigned eating bite after bite.
She trusted me and ate a mouthful. . . .
After anger rips into our mouths
leaving an aftertaste of dislike,
requisite is a dab of duteous prompting.
Once, she was so angry with me,
she pushed me into the porcelain sink.
The dentist sanded my chipped front tooth
and said, 'Lucky, you've over-sized teeth!'
She was Gen Pì Chóng1
and I, Jaws.
Though monstrous expectations
sunder our attitudes of love,
divorce our natural unity,
we're kept together
by gargantuan
mounts of effort
required from both,
given often
a smidgen out
of phase.
But when attitudes of love
are gashed, chucked under the bed,
abandoned with tumble-dust weeds of
incurious I-Don't-Care indifference,
timidly, with shoulders scrunched,
chin tucked between
prayer-clasped fists,
mouth puckered-parted,
Friendship
waits patiently.
This child of Love
turns away
from its
self.
I love her.
-Tsai
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