The sun’s rays are slow in reaching her sill,
but she’s not bothered by its tardiness.
Nursing the narcissus by the shut window,
she feels the moistness of the cold, damp soil.
In the shadows, she lives, from sun to sun,
a living phantom of hopes stale and cold.

As she gropes for the watering can, a cold
sweat comes upon her.  Leaning on the sill,
as if it upheld the weight of lost sun,
ruined splendor, she recalls his tardiness,
his nonchalance, her brave despair, the soil
of her injured pride — fire without a window. . .

All’s evoked by the can’s rawness, a window
to wounds, a touch condemning her to cold
remembrances.  She left her native soil
for his.  He found her sitting on a sill,
eager to be led, for the tardiness
of love weighed on her heart.  He was her sun.

Now permanently exiled from the sun
of youth, eviscerated by the window
of time, she shuffles with the tardiness
of death, waiting for rage to die.  A cold,
dissonant howl were his eyes by the sill
as he silently casted her off as soil.

She had given her trust only to soil
her heart.  While tears watered her wrath, her sun
of sorrow shone blindingly on the sill
of eclipsed remorse.  Staring out a window,
she had seen him give daffodils on cold
days to someone else without tardiness.

Her narcissus is blind, (a tardiness
of blooms, she’s told), just leaves on fertile soil.
He said he desired children with her ... Cold
are his brow and his lips.  Glazed by the sun,
its oblong rays, the water is his window
to the sky ... No daffodils grow on her sill.

The sun and water collide on the cold
dark soil.  She stares blankly out the window. . .
He paid for his tardiness to love by the sill.

-Tsai