Far from Home

I wrote this poem while I was in China in 1999, thinking about my boyfriend in America. I'd forgotten I wrote it, but I found it leafing through an old notebook. Its one of those poems that's not necessarily valuable in a literary sense, but it's meaningful since it was written during a moment of intense emotion. I'm not sure if it was supposed to end where it ends, or if I got distracted writing it, but out of respect for whatever I was feeling back then I didn't try to change anything.

I sit, lost in my thoughts

Beautiful music whispers through my mind

And reminds me of your closeness

And farness from me

As I look around

At a world so beautiful and alien.

I fear it, yet I am drawn to it

Because it is what I've always wanted

But can never truly have.

I imagine you here with me,

In another time that will never come,

Enjoying this peace and majesty together

Beneath a cherry tree in the sun.

A faint smile pulls at my features,

But is washed away

By a twisting, clenching pain.

My throat knots,

And I embrace the sorrow

Because although my heart feels like dying,

I do not want to forget the wistful expression

On your face the day I left.

The memory twitches against the contradictions in my mind

Like a dying blossom,

Hanging to its stem.

I think of all the ways I've changed since I met you,

The good and the bad,

And how miraculous it is

That two people can grow together through love.

What is the conclusion to this feeling?

It is like the seasons -

I do not know if it ends

With summer or winter

In my heart;

Only that the cycle

Can not End at all.