One of my students uses this to describe
the way a person leaves the room and I circle
it with a question mark, scribble: Too Vague
with my red pen. During my snowy walk home,
I bury my nose into my already damp scarf, wonder
if I 'm a bad teacher, how this student could possibly
miss the whole point of my metaphor lecture
and if this ice won't give just a little bit for my boots.
But the more I think about it, I think: Genius!
For who hasn't vanished without so much as a trace
of waxy lip prints on a glass, not even leaving
a single stray hair on the back of a chair? Sometimes
disappear means leave quickly so I don't feel your absence.
Carpenter ants don't even shake one last message
to their beloved queen before they crawl
into a smooth piece of driftwood and set sail
for new shores. When he drove away last winter,
I avoided looking at the ground for days so I would not
find an imprint of his shoe. And maybe what my student
meant was anything can be loss, even the good things:
A ring juicy with rubies, a new spaniel pup, an orange
so fat its segments beg to be unfolded like a blossom
In your hand. Even the chara plant, the world's
first known underwater vegetation, suddenly
disappeared, it gave no warning—never even feigned
a withering of its bubbly leaves, its hardy stems
curling in and around bedrock, brushing the scales
of mysterious striped fish until its very last day.
© Aimee Nezhukumatathil
