A Gray Sparrow in Your Eyes

Jacqueline Chen (she/her)

In their eyes live countless faces,
Inside them dwells a gray sparrow, forever hungry,
Beaking a salt-cured fruit stone.
Midnight tides slide down the glass,
Settling into the blank between us,
And I feel a sudden helplessness.

They sit across from me,
A wild, untamed shadow,
Where light sinks and forgets the way out.
I only watch in silence,
Knowing they will fly off in the end,  
Toward the next place that makes them thirst,
 until I drown in sorrow.

They are peeling a ripe orange,
Pith torn away with patience,
To reveal a full, undefended core.
They are too close – 
Close enough for me to breathe the same air.  
The words sit on the tip of my tongue,
Just like that salt-cured stone,
Too bitter to swallow and too hard to spit.
I breathe briefly beneath their wild, untamed shadow.

They stack the peel into a small hill,
Trapping the last bits of warmth.
The gray sparrow in their eyes,
Never once perches on my shoulder.
From now on, with every rainy afternoon,
The soil will rise faintly with salt,
Like a summer, you passed through me,
And forgot to take it away.