A Grid Of Stars

Today your mother dropped by, gavesome of your things to us; staredwistful at our fashions and newsof university; clutching her coffee cupwith white, composed fingers;her calm unhinting voice talksof cupric blueness of Mediterranean, where they'd just returned from-pausing upon the inexorable.

Steam above coffee, rising,
the bright kitchen.
This gentle aftermath of closure.

Tonight I am bound for San Francisco.On the plane, pressing my face, palms to the glass.Takeoff is the moment of vulnerability,where everything seems to fallapart, a roar of lifting wheels and churning, changing air.I watch the forsaking city as neon andfluorescence beneath my leaving feet.Knowing with absolute convictionthat if I were God deciding a grid of stars,the first would never have to be elegy.

-Edlyn Ang-