She Loves You

Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team
How To Tell If A Korean Woman Loves You
by Christy NaMee Eriksen

If a Korean woman cleans her mind out in the spring
and you are still in it,

she loves you.

If you buy a korean woman some flowers
and she lets them die slow painful deaths in a vase on her table,
stems limp, crispy petals weak to the most passive of breaths
and she has yet to see them lose their luster,
she smells them in her sleep,
she loves you.

If you walk out of a korean woman’s kitchen
and there is rice on your sock
she loves you.

If you’ve never seen a korean woman sing in the rain,
only recite poems from the
purple cursive of her veins,
translated verbatim
nerve after crooked nerve,

If you are a bomb
with a kindled tick
and she has not walked away,

If you find a boat in your bedroom
that she carried home from a rummaged shore
and refuses to call broken,

If her heart is the shape of the border
and some days she can’t step across it,

If there is only one comet
and only one telescope
and only one her
and only one you
and she passes the view,

she loves you,

and she can see the stars from here.

~~~~~~~~~~

Posted with permission of the poet.

Sara is hosting this week's Poetry Friday round-up at Read Write Believe.