Eleven Years Tasted Like a Thousand Year Old Chinese Egg
eleven years tasted like
a thousand-year old Chinese egg
doorway cracked
windows rusted at the seams–
the nights grew thin and red
summer gripped me in its fist
then winter tricked your shadows into my eyes
leaving imprints on walls
the tall looking glass
staircase
sidewalks
with rain and snow poured heavy like the China sea,
I went to your house
ghosts roamed behind the chiffon curtains
faint but they left me breathless,
always
distance was a skeletal landscape stirred in smoke–
this was heartache I knew
still I came
and grieved
woke to eat the black preserved egg
slept when the sky broke into yellow yolk on my lips and skin,
back to front
I was narcotized with the kernels of your excess
your painful sincerity
your articulate cold–
now I smoked your cigarettes
tasted the chemicals
musky
rotten,
I blew out wisps of clouds
the whiteness sat at the tips of my fingers
resolved to leave me near invisible.
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with over ninety journals, including a chapbook with Crisis Chronicles Press (2015), Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, QLSR (Singapore), elsewhere, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. Lana divides her times between the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a wife of a novelist, and a mom of two frolicsome imps.