I want to memorize your face, 

let it sink 
into my body 
like rain seeps into earth. 

Your roots cannot survive this soil; 
how can I explain? 


	~ 


The heart that used to pump my blood 
goes with you—
please accept so small a gift. 

How will the longan tree bear fruit? 

Sweet food has lost its taste, 
monsoon mocks my weeping. 


	~ 


Rice fields keep me busy, 
my hands find much to do. 

Lemongrass and fish sauce 

have found some flavor; 
memory lights a candle 
where my heart was. 


	~ 


Behind the leaves of dragon’s eye, 
sometimes I think I see...

In mangoes as they ripen, 
in clouds that form and disappear, 
in a corner, by the candle: 

my questions: 


	~ 


Is that soil good for you? 

Your roots 
grown deep, your branches green 
and filled with laughing? 

Do you hear the leafbird’s many calls, 
know that I have not forgotten? 

Cindy Bousquet Harris

is a poet, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the editor of Spirit Fire Review. Her poetry is found in Nostos, Unlost Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Clamor 2021, Black Bough’s Christmas & Winter Edition, and in several anthologies. Cindy lives in Southern California with her husband and their children.

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⚡ Gunnysack, cherita sequence by Cindy Bousquet Harris, a semi-finalist in MacQ’s Magician Ekphrastic Writing Challenge (Issue 3, May 2020)