de Clérambault

 

Because the plan was always rosemary and dill from the garden, I bent my hopes on a story about marrying you.

 

Because I’d marry you, the coast of Bari shimmered as it does.

 

The palm reader was right.

 

Because two lines met over a low vein, recognition would be simple.

 

Because I’d meet you, this made real an earth spent worthwhile.

 

As it does, dreams continue to leave; I don’t regret loving you from one.

 

As it does, the plan moves without us. A bird with red wings, doves, city larks. . .

 

Because the accidental pen ink on the thigh of your clothing would someday cease to anger you, I searched through twelve nights of satin; I found beautiful ribbons.

 

Because the drawers opened empty, the search also continues now into dawn.

 

This might become a lesson on time.

 

Because the palm reader was only half right, without you the garden still grows.

 

Lush as a prayer. Come, daylilies.

 

Because Norfolk wasn’t far, I broke the stems of fate and called.

 

Because calling broke that plan, my mother and my father walked into the ocean, side by side, laughing. My father swam out first, stronger than I’d seen of him in decades. He swam back, watched my mother dip beneath the tide, and waited. This became another lesson on how so few choose softness, how rare this is, and how marvelous.

 

Because I was soft, I forgave you like I had forgiven my father even in his most careless hours.

 

In Hanoi, I recall seeing a portrait of the empress.

 

Because the next palm reader kissed my palm, my father saw you in a dream also: you were gentle on a mountaintop. We were scattering my father’s ashes with the watchful ghost of my grandfather, for you would never meet either of them.

 

Because my father is alive as of writing this still, I know how this ends.

 

Because a choice against fate seeks alternative beginnings, I’ve done all I could to let you go. Swim out. Feel the tide separate us again.

 

Again, I’m made of little seconds. Come, crepe myrtle. Come now, holly.

 

Because the empress tended a garden, too, and a yellow house in Đà Lạt, her handwritten letters remain preserved faithfully to this day. In a sunny corridor are several framed photographs of her five children.

 

Help me write another prologue neither better nor worse.

 

Because the seconds crawl, kicking on their backs, I can’t tell a single line from the ocean’s horizon. I can’t stay afloat.

 

What did the palm reader say to you in Hong Kong? How long before we could meet? How long would we have together?

 

Tell me how the song ends.

 

Because I trusted you to lead us, the mountain doubled in my visions of peace. Same rules, different language.

 

Same heart, a different symphony.

 

Because the goldenrod burst with thunder at twilight, life showered your new apartment with shredded bits of paper; those were confessions I never sent.

 

Because pleasure would lead a shelled creature to the mouth of muddy water, both were transformed into a god. One had wishes. The other carried on.

 

Because I refused to infer tragedy from this legend, there were rules. One needed to be followed to the end.

 

Because the rule lit a black candle, I was a fool.

 

Wild mint, come.

 

Because the garden merely offered what the door couldn’t give, a path through it twisted after thirty days. There were tracks of mice and toads. Lilacs were in bloom like a book gifted; every page opened with a sweet word.

 

Because fate cannot be counted on, that is a broken rule.

 

I thank you.

 

Yes, the tracks eventually snuck up my body. I was marked. You entered because I had the foresight of pain deeper than the sound of someone leaving.

 

Because a poem was a choice, you left hastily with bruised nectarines.

 

For better or worse, the garden door burned.

 

The path of tenderness filled with smoke.

 

Because no light could change your mind about us, I learned a name for my heart’s full skirt. I thanked you.

 

Skyward, foxgloves shot through the soil. I was laughing even while I was breaking. Mad as it was, thank you.

 

Because brass and woodwinds carried the musical theme, most afternoons held a risk of begging: give me oil or bottles of bitters. This was my house. In the back, heading afield would be an old friend. I told him everything.

 

Because I knew your code at least four lifetimes before we’d meet, our palm lines met each other warily.

 

Because I trembled, and I tremble no more, coarse salt flavors Virginia. I’ve driven to its seashore for a wild horse. I’ve put my face through shame. I’ve buried a cord braided from two dark ribbons and a thick lock of perfumed hair. The moon was almost yellow.

 

Because my mother loved my father, I made a prayer.

 

Thus, cedarwood, and nowhere did I search for you, but there clicked a strange animal.

 

Because arriving ached more than your words of not wanting me all of a sudden, I wanted the animal’s death.

 

Then do it, I said. Slaughter me or dishonor what was gifted.

 

What happened to the shipwreck in Astoria?

 

Was it happiness?

 

Did you call me from the cliff’s edge or the woods? Did you say how you missed me every day and every evening, and I missed you too? Where were the ferns among haunted rooms?

 

Who made the tall order?

 

Was I patient all the while?

 

What happened? Was cutting the cord of wandering worth ten years between the reefs and the ship?

 

I yanked every cabinet drawer to the floor in confusion. Across a gilded hall by the elevators, I broke a mirror clean down its middle with my fists.

 

Because the inn had no good view in this dream, a sentence flew like a trapped barn owl around and around the ceiling. I couldn’t wake up from that. I couldn’t defend myself; you were right. You were wrong.

 

I yanked the ribbons out.

 

I yanked through piles of playing cards and, without meaning to, dropped the black candle. This was a Wednesday in June.

 

Glass cut my right foot. For hours, I could hear the echo of clattering pebbles on hickory vinyl planks. I heard the wailing bowl your father invited in Lucerne, and the fire pit was grand.

 

Because, when I was a child of eight or nine, the visions began, first of my death and how everyone I cared for, or will go on to care for, would die.

 

Because the most serene of visions lived under deep sea currents, I learned to hold my breath and kick.

 

At the bottom of a lagoon in California, I remember reaching for another child’s voice reaching back: a shadowy figure approaching. You had a strong tail like mine, gills like mine, and claws. We feared recognizing each other.

 

I feared you would kill me.

 

Oh, the extinction burst.

 

Oh, disappointment. Think twice. I danced with good legs in Olde Salem and feared nobody.

 

The familiar miscellany was the nonhuman between us, sonar navigation, or what might pass for language from lifetime to lifetime: perfect watery circles. No, I couldn’t suggest a premonition but the seeking canary in a cage.

 

Weapon of destiny: think and think. What did you mean by fear?

 

Had I descended on purpose, which way would’ve been the correct line except for through and through? I felt a choking, as well.

 

I felt the possibilities of our first and final words to each other meaning the same farewell.

 

The shipwreck was our home.

 

Some say love makes a terrible hand. I say you could’ve hurt me badly but you didn’t. That was a paradox.

 

Because I slept on the floor of my apartment through the fourth of July, because I slept holding a green candle, to my left sat holding vigil a miniature of my dead brother who patted my head and wanted the best for me. Old friend, I’m here.

 

To the right was my second dead brother, cold and righteous.

 

Because I slept with an unmarked raw egg atop twelve bills of American cash all together bundled in a clean white handkerchief, because this bundle sat atop my ribcage, because I slept with those items on my body unmoving beside the burning candle for four nights, by the third crack of dawn, I woke to a bloodied egg. By the fourth, I felt clean.

 

Because I’ve been thinking, the garden stood behind a temple.

 

Here were my elders. Some were patient; others, less kind.

 

Because somebody set the bones of a sacrifice long ago, here was our time.

 

The palm reader wept over my hand: you want love, my dear, but in your lineage walks an ancestor who opened a gate that should’ve remained shut.

 

Because the ritual landed on a new moon, which offered no light for an altar, an unclean desire, and east of Kyoto, twelve wooden ships under fire, a debt would be paid centuries afterward with the sign of a crab. Does that mean anything to you?

 

Because I didn’t know of this generational curse before we met and certainly not before Virginia drew me by a bell, and because my father told me of his bluest omens too late, I sought the source of faraway chiming for most of my twenties and half of my thirties; I couldn’t place the root of any dream.

 

I had dreams of a child.

 

I was desperate to meet the future.

 

In a village, a photograph of my great-grandmother: she wears a modest yukata and cloth sandals. Obaasan leans over a raised platform.

 

Because the platform had a cutting board, and because the girl was young, yet to be wedded to a cruel, brutal man, because Obaasan gripped a shining butcher’s knife against some pale cylindrical object, because I dreamt of your unborn son days after touching you, love only took us so far up the mountain but never down.

 

Because there are mysteries of karmic debt I have yet to understand, let alone explain, I let you say what you needed to say about desire and the form of our story cleaving. I couldn’t say what was right or wrong.

 

Because my last vision disturbed you, I’m sorry.

 

Because the most worthy of mysteries ascend with the sign of a lotus, please return in a single year, no sooner. The rest will be your choice.

 

Because you are made of infinite choices, allow me this image of your son who will someday grow to be sweet and curious. The rest will be my choice to make. I thank you for him, now go.

 

Because the garden had never been a secret, the door remains unbolted.

 

Because painted stones were left behind the cloak of a passing figure, for twelve months like the twelve generations before, a balance of twelve hundred burials must be paid without you. Trust me. This silence is our freedom waiting.

 

In the pines, look for butterflies nesting together.

 

The sycamores are beautiful in Oregon. The coast, like Bari, shimmers.

 

In the pines, I will hang a doll in plain sight. Don’t look for the doll.

 

Because anguish reveals itself as the truest knife, Obaasan’s altar will be set out once again. I’m not afraid. Don’t look for her under any sky.

 

In plain sight, a black ox lies next to a tree.

 

Mewing, there lays a cat next to the ox.

 

Because I dance, three candles will break over their hour.

 

In the rain, scarlet paint runs off my body; that is hypothetical.

 

Because my father’s spine collapsed shortly before his death, and because he remains alive as of noting that, and because his father’s tongue had been cut out years before his slow death, how Ojiisan, much like every killer before him, wielded the sword of his father, descendants of priests or executioners, and because winter in Tokyo pierces me every time I think about cats, what of a new bride screaming alone in the woods?

 

Mewing, there arrives my sister.

 

Shame is a color if we let it count to seven. I kiss my books. Let go.

 

Let me go, says the child’s smallest voice.

 

What becomes of our plan?

 

The barn owl continues round and around.

 

Because I witnessed a sacrifice before my birth, because my father went against fate and cared for my mother, because he refused to pass down the penultimate lesson on slaughter, he brought the ocean to us both. He told me to swim until I couldn’t swim anymore.

 

A palm reader in Hong Kong once told him at thirty-five how the choice of destiny clears with an unborn son, and my name would be Emi.

 

Choose a life greater than our blood, he said. Forgive me.

 

In the pines, I tap an iron nail with a small hammer into a tree. The nail turns gold after a while.

 

I take the longbow and arrows from my grandfather’s house. In a cemetery close to his mother’s village, I light a second black candle.

 

In Blacksburg, there are soft shoes never worn buried at the foot of a linden.

 

The shoes face north.

 

Because this curse might end after thirteen steps, devotion ends with a line about unbearable distance. Just between you and me though, I’m afraid.

 

Because my father has since identified you in a dream, the shoes have begun to face west on their own.

 

I learn to grow basil.

 

Friends celebrate deaths and births together.

 

In a film about brief encounters, two characters step off the train platform. Coal dust in the eye clears. Keep still.

 

Katydids rasp in my bedroom that summer. I take to sleeping in the car again. At 4:44 every morning for several iterations, a crow runs back and forth in front of the windshield.

 

On the hood one evening I leave out a tiny spoon.

 

The bird has stopped coming around. Now, I sleep indoors.

 

Because the chiming reveals a gaze, exile.

 

Because entropy tills daylight into narrow rows of suffering and non-suffering, come, snow peas.

 

Because daylight seems tolerable bit by bit, come, lightning. The silver spoon, which was taken in July, resurfaces on my doorstep by September, thank you. Forces at work, as they say.

 

Because swans return, autumn: come.

 

On your birthday, I light two candles: one for clarity of mind and heart, the other for protection.

 

Because sleep is a vessel for testimony, September reaches her destination crying.

 

Because the door’s hinges loosen in your absence, words abandon hours between resting and waking. Carefully, my bed also burns.

 

Somewhere, a circle has been drawn.

 

Wildflowers stain the lips. Friends return. Joy returns.

 

Waxing gibbous halo in Capricorn, the Pacific, beautiful pieces in silk or papery boxes, if only heaven breaks a good deal like them, say the crows and the cats gathering beneath a window. By the linden, a garnet beaded bracelet I’ve also buried with the shoes will be dug up by another animal.

 

Roses everywhere forget the startling sun.

 

Roses everywhere turn pale and dry on the glass coffee table, on my desk, on the windowsill. . .

 

For miles, a dreadful rush.

 

Because, for every wish totaled by illusion, to heal from that shapes a new future, let’s meet in the next life or the next, or throughout the next, seashore foaming against cypress.

 

Because autumn passes without comment, may all swans avoid the garden. Step around it. Ginger, iris, come.

 

A friend tells me to open a skylight in the room of sorrow.

 

Because another coats her walls with layers of soft lavender paint on a Thursday afternoon, I go to her at last crumbling to my knees in Victoria. For innumerable seasons, friends have continued to save me on rose quartz, saltwater, and roasted vegetables.

 

No matter the ruin, a storm of divine proportion, we laugh together.

 

To the sea, throw an iron key.

 

Somewhere abloom in a cemetery is Queen Anne’s lace guarding the submerged tabernacle with smashed shell pieces of a bloodied egg locked inside, and I welcome that which might obliterate me though it doesn’t, not yet. Not here.

 

Because Rilke wandered the cliffs of Trieste for an angel, because my brothers roused me every night in April at precisely 3:33 to seek a poem climbing up the promontory, just past the castle walls and over the Adriatic, and because even beyond knowing flowers of good or evil, far away is my spirit slain by the gods of wind.

 

Because a veil has thinned to no veil, into language the geometry of loss enters.

 

Sacred as a crimson gate, poppies spill from this garden.

 

Where do I go without you now? What if you return early and the door is open, the path still burning, and what if you think I’m inside?

 

Who are those people shrieking at my father’s people?

 

What does he make of a shrine under harvest moonlight?

 

Because the longbow hangs in a museum today, not in my father’s line, the two perhaps become a lesson on justice.

 

No matter the key, stars re-sharpen destiny’s current. That goes into a different room, of course. What else can be done but wait?

 

Thus, a skylight completes the job.

 

Someday refuge will become a house you understand.

 

I understand you. Go, but don’t look at the ceiling, as above, humming.