Melody Wang - Two Poems

Content Warning: grief, fertility

In an attempt to heal from this absence,

I make it a point to meditate each new moon, 

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             one hand placed on my belly, the other on my heart. 

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                           A time for new beginnings, but I am still suspended

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in the past, my fists clenched as if to keep myself in place. My place 

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              in the vast multiverse, uncertain at best. No time to grieve, I march on

                          as if in a dream: tell me again           why          I need all this strength

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In the next room, my lover works into the wee hours. Fueled

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               by coffee and the pulse of progressive melodies, he throws 

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                          open the window to greet the night air in a sweet embrace

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He, both familiar and strange to me, convenes

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                with the same new moon that infuses his broad

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                          shoulders with a renewal that somehow eludes me 

In a forgotten town

the somber night stretches

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            its spindly fingers, silent

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                         and desperate to pry off

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the last of the urchins

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             that still cling to the rock

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                         as dark waves weep below —

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they appear now, guided

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             by feather-soft moonlight,

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                         these overlooked fishermen

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boys with aged eyes and grit etched

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             onto jaundiced faces, who cast

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                         their nets into brooding sea

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only to yield cold-scaled

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             bodies pungent with decay

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                          where their dreams should be