by Charissa Cheuk
I see you there, beneath my palm:
fully unaware – peaceful, and calm –
of my looking upon your shy faces.
Why, there must be a million places
I could be, finding meaning so true;
but friends, I wish to be with you.
This satellite map sees nothing
into your carved hearts and bright-red strings,
but I hold it solely for assurance,
for my comfort, solely, in this instance.
Why should you be so far out of reach?
How long, for you, must I beseech?
From the paths of meadows and trees
to the beckoning waves of the seas,
we’ve flown and fallen, laughed, fought, and cried;
when I left you, a piece of me died.
You hide, you hide – you keep on hiding! –
Memories, they’re not subsiding.
As I watch these worms crawl about,
I cannot conceive of them without
feeling mortified at the drastic gap
separating you from those hopeless chaps.
As far as the heavens from the earth
is their happiness, from your mirth.
However much I’m prejudiced,
the arrow will not, by far, have missed.
Perhaps you’d risen up from the bottom
(though by what, I would not seek to fathom)
the moment I stepped foot off your soil,
when I had deemed them as your foils.
Because they never could compare –
their satellite maps won’t see you there!
Their wildest dreams cannot hope to attain
the space in my heart where you’ve left a stain.
You are the tears that fall from my eye;
you are the stars that shine in my sky.
Charissa Cheuk is a missionary kid (MK) who grew up in a creative access country in Asia, intermittently moving back to Canada every few years. She is now studying neuroscience at the University of Toronto.
