Traces so Patient, so Pure by Emma DePanise

From plume to basin, molecule to mortar, this flawed forgetting

flows, this cascading remembrance claws, clamors. And maybe

I was built to forget the topography

of your nose so I could remember the next

man’s eyes, coins I collect from corners

and floors to leave in crumbs at the bottom

of my purse. Maybe I was built to forget your tongue

on my thighs, your shower towel, how it soured

my nose, how I occasionally whiff it in my own and I’m convinced

I soaked up the scents you left

until you become a smell I don’t know

I know, until I do, like the hot vacuum running the ridges

empty, and suddenly, I love you. I’ll half-forget that

to remember my grandfather’s chimes—the sea glass

and spoons, the Chinese characters on bamboo—how they glittered

the breeze in one gangly swoop. How they hung

from the bush we named tree, the one in the middle

of the boards it grew between. It crept through an inch

of empty. A little space is all

you need. And maybe it is his eyes

at the bottom, bronze waiting to be churned, holding

what you once whispered between words. Maybe they open.

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Emma DePanise’s poems are forthcoming or have appeared recently in journals such as Poetry Northwest, The Tusculum Review, Laurel Review, The Florida Review, Barrow Street and elsewhere. She is a current PhD student in English at the University of Missouri and is an editor of The Shore Poetry.