The Outsider

Carrie Chang

There’s a reason 

To genuflect under the wu-tong su 

That’s dying under the October sun, 

Gilded pretty as a picture 

In a museum from 

The broken city, from 

Your last life, when 

You had fast spoken words 

Coming out of your pocket, 

And asylum in your eyes, 

And greater portents 

To be a person whose 

Addled sorrows could 

Be felt in those willows, 

Among the gained and spent 

Hours by the grass, simple 

Lives never achieved 

Were more complex 

Than we knew, time 

Was reaching out 

To touch you before 

You could say adieu