Reading Edna St. Vincent Millay,
I think about the mornings muezzin woke me at four forty, his song solemn, I’d stumble out of bed
and bend my knees on the soumak rug not knowing whether to repent for those mornings spent under
the fragrance of her umber hair, the Turkish paper sprawled over us as she read, or the mornings waking
to the smell of thick coffee poured into a ceramic mug painted with her celadon eyes; it seems
her eyes follow me by deserted walks over the Galata Bridge, the fisherman’s line pulling by the fence, a trapped fish,
I wouldn’t ever know why she threw her pearls into the sea, I should have forgotten her already, but her eyes,
I miss them, her breath I miss, how to think of those days, as now, when Millay describes the knots
that bound her beneath the earth’s soil, and sounds of renewed rainfall beating on the thatched roofs.
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Carina Yun was born in San Francisco, California. She is a MFA candidate in poetry at George Mason University. Her poems have appeared at Fourteen Hills, Folio, The Feminist Wire, Poet Lore, Switchback, Verdad, and others.