Remembering our last meal in New York

I eat chirashizushi, peel the raw fish
from their sweet bed of seasoned rice.
I know right now the beaten mares on 59th
stomp slowly at the snowy curb, take great
pitchers of air into their distended lungs
and bloom from between yellowed teeth
white peonies against the trees of Central Park.
I have tried to forget your light, the way it breaks
me open, even now, and makes me speak,
how it glitters in the gutters up and down 8th Avenue,
swirling in pools of snowmelt, so many
sparkling tea leaves I still read for signs of you.

Keetje Kuipers
Remembering our last meal in New York first appeared in West Branch, Number 58, Spring/Summer 2006.