Homecoming

Homecoming

Marisa Lin

My dearest, today you return.
Healing’s peaceful agony
in your breast, the winter summer
of ice cream sidewalks
left behind. Behind, the water
closes like the Red Sea and the only
scream you hear is your own. Darling,
my morning can hold all of you—
your dissonant scales, stuttering wishes, regrets
carved into a beautiful waste. By now
your hollowed heart
has been bought, sold, and stolen
in my market. Guardian, Keeper
Of Your Days, The One To Whom All
Your Past Selves Are Running To,
I am both the umbrella and the rain, the pain
marking the beginning from the end—
yours. Do you not believe? Daily,
you lose a part of yourself
for me to stitch anew. Each little loss
just a shy unfolding of
my fiefdom; the wrecked promise,
its peeling gold, the clatter of your heart
on the floor—all windows to this earth’s brittle grace.
Yes, even my will. For intention
serves its own kind of mercy. A fever breaks itself
like the sun bursting through the seams
of its womb. Each papercut slit in your dreams
is light slicing my name
on your chest. Your arms. Your thighs. All
shapes of my gentleness.
Dearest one, I ceased the wind holding back
the waves because the sea swallows
more than just your past—
under the surface, a girl breathes, shimmering.
a star burning its weight into water.

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Marisa Lin
Poet & Writer

Marisa is a daughter of Chinese immigrants and an immigrant herself who grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. She began writing poems during her senior year at Stanford University, where she graduated with a BA in Economics. Marisa is an alumna of the 2021 Community of Writers and VONA workshops and her work is forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson and Clerestory Magazine.

Photography by Cottonbro