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Animal, Look
The miracle is not that this
is a lover’s poem, but that I
am the one writing it.
In the bathroom, I perch
at the edge of the tub
while she brushes her teeth
under the light.
Firm line of muscle behind the round shoulder,
stencil sketch of the sharp backbone.
It isn’t that I believed I would never love again,
only,
sometimes, these several years,
I believed I would never love again.
I wrote about deserts, copper,
shorelines and springs.
How the hourglass of life never
is turned.
Now, this woman’s back against my blue
brushed-cotton sheets.
The miracle was not her:
tender, vain, playful,
certain to leave.
Cold edge of the bathtub.
Harsh light of midnight.
It was my own heart I marveled at,
its skip and unease,
How it shifted, a small animal in its nest
raising its head, finally, to look.
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Cleo Qian (she/her) is a queer fiction writer and poet born in California. She is the author of the short story collection Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go (Tin House, 2023) which was one of Time’s 100 Best Books of the Year as well as being longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, among other accolades. Her writing has been published in outlets including ZYZZYVA, Pleiades, The Sun, The Massachusetts Review, and others.
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French, School of Fontainebleau (last quarter of 16th century), Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa sur la duchesse de Villars (Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters).
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Author: Terence Winch
