Last Visit & What You Don’t Know
When I lay my head into the sunlight,
I am trying not to be cruel. When I store
the shattered glass, I am trying to be
forgiving. When I take you by two fingers,
like a child touching the urchin at an
aquarium, I am trying to forget
that dead things don’t respond
to tenderness. That they don’t respond
to anything. Trying to remember the blue
and magic of our summers, but I admit
it is getting harder to remember color
when each day is bled dry waiting
in a dead white room. When the security
checks my airtight container of figs,
I explain that I am bringing a bit of home
to you. What I don’t say is that the wasp
dies in the fig to lay her eggs. That the fig
is at once morgue and home, at once
end and beginning. That I have not known
a purer form of love. When the fragrance
of the fig tree penetrates the sterile static,
I am trying to love.
I am trying not to be cruel. When I store
the shattered glass, I am trying to be
forgiving. When I take you by two fingers,
like a child touching the urchin at an
aquarium, I am trying to forget
that dead things don’t respond
to tenderness. That they don’t respond
to anything. Trying to remember the blue
and magic of our summers, but I admit
it is getting harder to remember color
when each day is bled dry waiting
in a dead white room. When the security
checks my airtight container of figs,
I explain that I am bringing a bit of home
to you. What I don’t say is that the wasp
dies in the fig to lay her eggs. That the fig
is at once morgue and home, at once
end and beginning. That I have not known
a purer form of love. When the fragrance
of the fig tree penetrates the sterile static,
I am trying to love.
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Vanessa Y. NiuVanessa Y. Niu is a Chinese-American writer and classical singer who lives in New York City. She was the runner-up for the 2024 New York State Youth Poet Laureate, and her work has been recognized by the Kennedy Center, Teen Vogue, the Guggenheim, NYFW, and Frontier Poetry. Her poetry collections have been finalists in the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writing Series and Small Harbor Press Chapbook competition, and off the lined page, her work has been set to music in collaborations with Juilliard and Interlochen composers.
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