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After Reading Liu Che I Warm Up Leftover Pancakes
and Think of a Girl I Loved a Long Time Ago
Like many affairs, ours began
in a backseat and ended in a bedroom.
Tonight the moon is hidden and I have no idea where you are.
I drink cider that is about to turn
and try to remember meals we shared.
I know once we sat at the Blue Benn counter
with my stepfather and already my heart was stray from yours.
It is so hard to be true.
It is impossible to say what happens in this life and what any of it means.
I cannot keep orchids, though they demand little attention.
Tomorrow I will start the seeds for cabbages and snap peas.
It will be months before I know their fate.
Every night I learn something more of patience,
though the lessons are painful, though my heart is like a chipped cup,
wary of tea's scalding waters.
This morning I went to the High Museum
to see the terra cotta soldiers from Qin Shi Huang's underground empire.
Imagine the farmer who found them two thousand years on,
his astonishment and reverence.
What lasts is hard, what lasts is beautiful.
The implements of war, the pitchers for water.
A crane made of clay.
God knows our paths, night is a fog-fleeced map.
I remember the taste of your tears, your breasts, your somethingelse.
No farmer can find me now.
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Jason Myers grew up in Hagerstown, Maryland. He is a graduate of Bennington College and received his M.F.A. in Poetry from NYU. Among other publications, his work has appeared in AGNI, Euphony, The Paris Review, Tin House, and West Branch. He currently lives in Atlanta, where he is an Honors Scholar and Congregational Fellow at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.