Poetry has appeared in "Shemom," "Seeker Magazine," the "Quarterly Journal of Ideology," "Writer’s Hood," "Mi Poesias," and "Ella: Mi Po Women’s Beat." Another will be appearing in a forthcoming issues of "The Unrorean."

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in writing, she worked for several years
as a technical writer in Manhattan. She now lives with her husband and two sons in Pennsylvania.

In my sleep you monster the sky
with circles of memory,
slip dignity from my skin
while I clutch and grab
at the possibility
of something precious.
I barely get to choose to dream
before you vanish,
a flinch in the night,

and I wake.
Morning drags me into day where
our house sits in its ordinary place.
I mourn in doorways,
below windows, tangle my fingers
in curtains and coats and hooks
in the closet.
I clutch things tightly
but still they escape
wafting memories as they go—

such sweet scents, such sad leftovers
not unlike the roast in the fridge.
I eat.
I bathe.
I cry but no water drunk or dried
distracts me from the past.

Perhaps this time next year
the memorials will be less.
I tire of lit candles weeping wax.
I tire of neighbors who talk as if they know.
Your newborn son cries and sleeps
and eats like any infant—
like something precious.
I keep your photo in his room.
He’ll grow up with that
even as the sky falls around me
into circles of dust
when I lie down to sleep.

Copyright © 2004 Christine Klocek-Lim