Cheryl Julia Lee (b. 1991)
SELECTED POEMS
Have you heard the tongues of the waves
“It’s a costly thing living here...” —Dermot Healy
I moved to your hometown to forget you, to replace you with any other passer-by; after all, if you come from the same place, you must be alike. All around me I found bodies like yours, willow-frail and time-thrashed; I stood in the gaze of similar tender eyes; heard again voices carry the clumsy and terrible weight of having to say: I have love in me for you. But mostly, I found the swelling sea and the crying wind that taught me it is a costly thing to live here. Things are always pulling away, without warning, before we are prepared, more consistently than we expect. I haul stones and build walls with the best of men; we fill the gaps, soothe the fissures, shore up our bulwark piecemeal. Each time the coastline draws closer still so we tell ourselves the gales and the rain are reshaping us into forms of majestic beauty, that flowers will grow between the cracks we cannot heal. And when night comes, we retreat and repeat the gestures with words, drink, memories. We set the table with sturdy solitude. We save places for the tides. Tomorrow, we do it all over again.
by Cheryl Julia Lee
first published in Icarus (Issue LXVI, Volume I, 2015)
