To Jason
You are beautiful
sea green fresh bee
You are breakfast
in afternoon light
You are a diptych, no,
a triptych processing
three concurrent worlds:
two versions of 人间
and one version of
everything that exists
in english You are sleeping
under the weight of
the ceiling fan-minced
air You are the
weight of the air
minced by the ceiling
fan You are a plucked
green clementine, no, two,
fresh and ripe under the cave of
our weighted blanket You are
the weighted cave
of our blanket and you are
the bendy bamboo mat
you laid on our bed to keep
us cool in summer,
because even though we have ac
your body remembers
those years without it—
remembers the house where
we lived with one hundred chefs,
or maybe it was five, no,
yes, one hundred chefs
and one bathroom—
and your body remembers hot
fujian where your front yard was
confetti’ed in fallen starfruit
and your backyard was the east
china sea, teeming
with snails, qiě, 龙虾 You are
snails, qiě, 龙虾 You are
a green chinese veggie the way
every veggie is a green
chinese veggie in google
translate, the differences
between wispy ethereal grasses
and pale melons hung
with a mess of coiled vines lost
somewhere over the atlantic You are
李子 and
I am 荔枝, but
you are sweet pink expensive
荔枝 from a sunset-park
fruit stand, and
you call me 李子 too
The way you named yourself,
and named yourself
Again