"Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido." (Love is so short, and forgetting is so long).” -Pablo Neruda
Wish
I could bypass and reverse heartbreak
back to when we stood on a busy subway platform,
a pair of brown, ripe pear trees parting brooks
of people. We leaned in for a kiss that fluttered
like a million monarchs landing at once.
We were so striking, giraffes
transported from the bed we'd just made into
a private starry savannah in Harlem, taller
and more beautiful than anything else. I began
to grow another chamber that summer afternoon
after your birthday, just for you.
Or to Love Fountain in Philly, the wet reaching skyward
again and again, a series of risings, like us
night after night, eventually falling back into, then away
from each other. The mist, our braided fingers,
your Indian profile, the green bench that held
a shimmering, shared peace.
Inside the pale rose of that deep chamber,
I'm still sitting there with the you
who loved me, even as my coin
rusts among other hopes
at the bottom of a shallow pool, in a city
where neither of us live.
Kamilah Aisha Moon is an alumna of Cave Canem. A recipient of fellowships to the Prague Summer Writing Institute, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and the Vermont Studio Center, her work has been featured or is forthcoming in several journals and anthologies, including The Harvard Review, jubilat, Sou’wester, The Oxford American, Lumina, Callaloo, Bittersweet, Open City, Essence, Bloom, Obsidian III, Mosaic, Gathering Ground, The Ringing Ear and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. A featured poet in conferences and venues around the country, she has also led creative writing residencies for the Langston Hughes National Poetry Project, Community~Word Project, Acentos and Voices UnBroken. Moon received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Moon currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. For more info on Ms. Moon, please visit http://www.kamilahaishamoon.org/
