Do you still recognize the colors
in my hair when the sun hits it just right?

Can you sense the differences of the perfumes
I wear every day, shuffling them to see
which one lures you in to my wrists, my neck,
my chest?

Have you thought about how my body,
my passion, my needs changed from before
to after you’ve felt all of me, knew all of me?

Will you remember all the details of me every
single day and see that they’re right next to you
from the moment you wake to the last fluttering
of lids before you sleep?

He stares at the whizzing blades above the bed,
recalling each face during moonlight hours—
civilians twitching with each bullet as they slam
into walls, finally trapped.
His hands, trembling, remain bare
but the faint iron odor sits under his nose, unmoving
since 1967 in Dak Son.

Defeated cries pierce the early morning silence
in the village.  A baby whimpers next to the body
of his mother. Women’s feet pound against gray dirt,
an anthem for the safety of children.

He visits fallen brothers, squinting
at endless rows of gravestones.
The villagers all lie together.

I hang up after speaking to a high school friend,
the idea of change and the past few years against the present’s
current creates an overcast in my head, like the nights
I sit outside, searching for the moon.
I’ve found liberty lingers in the harsh smell
of lent cigarettes. It collects in a shot glass, shines
in the eyes of my best friend as 2 AM ticks out
the blame she harbors and my ongoing inadequacies

stemming from the need to please teachers
and parents, my peers, earning me the gentle title
of Class Peach, which held expectations like
amiability and persisting kindness too high
for me to knock off the shelf of reputation.
Academics pushed me, but books and poetry allowed
me to look through the keyhole, a world
where humanity rips off restraints to help
each other become free, encouraging the trip
along white and yellow lines leading to different places.

Driving past your house reminds me of how different
our lives are now, so far from the summer evenings
where we drank your brother’s Yuengling and watched
people walk by the abandoned building from the dance studio
of that free time we lusted after,

that moment I lusted after.
Our lips, pressed hard, too frantic from time lost,
built up for months, wanting, and night walks
through the hushed neighborhood, moving parallel,
knowing someday we might cross,

throwing clothes aside, stale breadcrumbs
of my relationship guiding us to your bed, stripping
me down to my soul as your mouth whispered my name
down my neck, I-love-yous across my chest
as if they wouldn’t dry up

like the rust-colored roses you bought before I left
for school that stayed at home because flowers
can’t survive in a dorm without the love that brought
them up from the soil.

They warn us that fever travels in the air,
so women pull the shutters closed and keep
children out of the empty, heady streets.
Grandpa tries to assure me we are safe,
that yellow fever will stop when the ports
close. He never speaks of how the victims suffer,
shuts the curtains against my anxious eyes
as the bodies are removed, but rumors catch
the breezes, too.

Vomiting, bleeding from the nose and mouth,
the eyes yellow, and then victims reach out
in a last fit of delirium, demanding forgiveness
from God’s wrath as He turns them the sallow
shade of the September sun. This is the color
of a body when salvation fractures
from the depths of their souls.

Each day, the count of the dead rises.
My cousin, the milkman, a widow down the block—
all pass within hours. The Quakers deem
this the Almighty’s will, his “rod.” Physicians
bleed the sick, and I think not to rid them of disease,
but to account for sin.

We all hope for frost. I know Grandpa will not leave
the city, but I do not imagine his eyes yellowing,
for pride keeps them clear of exhaustion
and glaze from inviting liquor or laudanum.

My whole body sweats from dreams
of corpses the color of tobacco-stained teeth,
blood pouring from eyes like tears, each one dropping
to the ground. I wake up, dizzy in smeared-red sheets,
my nightgown smelling like a mausoleum, but I do not
call for help because I’ve been waiting to look
into the face of God, to see my yellowed city’s reflection.