Emily Liu

NOCTURNE

Lying under the moon, your chest brushes against the dark
like a swollen eyelid. Through a lack of skin, the light burrows,

planting its white lesions, wolf teeth.  I am tempted to understand
this as beauty: a pale mouth feeding on the body even

when the mind has left. Against us, the reflection of light 
is either specular or diffuse—either retaining energy, or losing

image. So we are seen
only because we reflect the shapes of others.

It follows, the night drains your white-
fuzzed organs as if suckling the brackish tongues

from oysters. Was it you who said:
not yet, I can die anytime

and clenched a cloth between your teeth?
A lack of light before an excess of image. 

With this night, your skin accumulates weft,
waxes porous like the brimy scalp of the sea

the bodies of a million unseen objects float
through without notice, 

neither emitting nor reflecting light. 
I am wondering

who will bear witness to an image 
that exists only in the eyes of others—