The Clouds Are Imitating that Face You Made at Last Year’s Costume Party
You were dressed like my mother, your hair
dyed the color of a distant galaxy, a tunic of stars
hanging from your eyes, a song of prosperity
trailing behind you like a shadow, even when
we walked through the mud, even then. You
said only one thing to me that night: you told me
that you’d never seen the ocean, had never even
held a seashell to your ear or drank a glass
of water that someone had put salt in as a joke.
You cried when you said that. A single tear
ran down what looked to me like my mother’s
face. I took it from you with my finger, put it in
my mouth, put my head into the valley of your hands,
and you held it like a stone, held it close to your ear,
hearing for the first time the slow breathing
of the trees, the inhalation of the energetic dust the
suns’ knuckles kneaded out of less exciting matter;
and the sound beneath that sound, the words
my father hid from my mother inside me, small
words, the smallest in the world, each of them
an ocean, each of them a long, breaking bone.
• • •
Philip Jason is a writer from NY. His poetry can be found in magazines such as Spillway, Lake Effect, Hawaii Pacific Review, Summerset Review, and Canary. His first collection of poetry, I Don’t Understand Why It’s Crazy to Hear the Beautiful Songs of Nonexistent Birds, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.