by Kevin Lee
your over-faithful voice was endlessly disarming,
vibrating in my skull when you stopped to think.
though the distance between us has grown since
we said goodbyes, i haven’t fled your room.
there’s no retreat from it, because i surrendered
to you like a bird returning to its cage; because
your touch justified each and every claim; i was just
so eager, just so, to find new ways to kneel. i
would recite those promises again, my little
offerings, but yearning doesn’t summon as much as
it erodes. all that you get from yearning is dead
seeds. still, i pray, sowing dead seeds is sowing
seeds all the same.
Kevin Lee is a poet, among other things, based temporarily in London and New York. He self publishes zines and chapbooks, and read his poetry aloud for the first time as his last pre-lockdown act. His work often meditates on his heritage as a Chinese American and centers on his experiences returning to a motherland that was never his.