I have abandoned all my old haunts

Nowadays, I am sure
of few places
under a peach moon. Tell me a little
about the lake
and its stained fish,
so that I might learn to love freshwater
and its strange scenes––the lake, a gray sheen
swallowing my face.
Today, I am older
and I must learn to love older things.
At the bus stop, I stand
solemnly in blue, waiting for the rain
to pause because it must.
How water always returns
to itself
is a reassuring grief. By grief,
I mean expectation. That the moon will retain
its bulging eye.
That the trees will lean towards
salt, regardless of the season.
Tomorrow, I will visit the florist––
mourning colors
for the life that I knew, that I lost
in the agitated mess of things,
that cradle of flights I slept
through.
Tell me more about
this town and the poplar streets.
Tell me
when autumn comes. When it falls
like a dynasty of color.
The underbellies
of leaves are still a sore green, and
I walk home wondering how to dress
for the next day.
I want my shadow
to be shivering with light,
the kind that fills sailcloth
and leaks onto the men
in white, the clear grain of lakewater.
Here, there is a static to everything,
a dark sleet muting the town
and its sharp windows.
The cold chalked
onto the sidewalk, outlines
of stranded boats
and their owners suffused under lamplight.
Some days,
there are only the last calls of geese
rolling against Lake Michigan, and I mimic
the foaming sound.
Over the phone, my mother says
I sound skittish, hoarse.
My syllables sloppy
in the arid wind. Like a bird
from a wetter country. That I have begun
to sound like home
is a gnawing truth.
What I think about reliably:
atmospheric light,
bodies of fish, the tumbling
kiss of grass against my shins.
Here, gleaming beetles and the shorn heads
of the elderly dot the shore:
men and their
wives
who have seen the grand voyages
of old moons,
before the perpetual flicks of light
on the horizon.
Even now, I think about lamps and
how the geese rise,
yellowing and full against the lake.
Those striations of black,
stark against the deep Midwestern water,
heading towards the horizon
like small divots of ash.
And beyond,
a lone white sailboat flickering thinly
against the sun. There––
in the chilled blue,
waiting for the wind to turn.

Yong-Yu Huang is a writer based in Illinois, but she is originally from Taiwan and Malaysia. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Waxwing, Superstition Review, and Passages North, among others. She has been recognised by various institutions, including Princeton University, The Kenyon Review, and the Poetry Society of the UK, and the Hippocrates Society. She is the recipient of the 2021 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize and has been included in Best Small Fictions. She attends Northwestern University.

I have abandoned my old haunts