"Paper Year" by Fatima Lim-Wilson
Paper Year
by Fatima Lim-Wilson
Let us celebrate with our household gods.
Call in the family ghosts who have never left.
They glue hurled vases, hum ancient tunes
To muffle our shouts. Tonight, let us
Use our wedding gifts, all silver and outsized.
We dance, fencing with our elbows, boasting
Of how our feet never leave the ground.
We toast to the absence of friends, severed
By our shared disdain. Who could have
Ever liked us? Smoke rises, ashes
Shifting into flowershapes. The very
Ghosts shiver in our glacial drift.
We try to keep warm, throwing
Into the fire the volumes read
Between our spoken lines and the blueprints
For bridges we built, separately,
As we talked in our sleep.
by Fatima Lim-Wilson
Let us celebrate with our household gods.
Call in the family ghosts who have never left.
They glue hurled vases, hum ancient tunes
To muffle our shouts. Tonight, let us
Use our wedding gifts, all silver and outsized.
We dance, fencing with our elbows, boasting
Of how our feet never leave the ground.
We toast to the absence of friends, severed
By our shared disdain. Who could have
Ever liked us? Smoke rises, ashes
Shifting into flowershapes. The very
Ghosts shiver in our glacial drift.
We try to keep warm, throwing
Into the fire the volumes read
Between our spoken lines and the blueprints
For bridges we built, separately,
As we talked in our sleep.