Waiting, Shiya Wu

 

 

You are sleeping on 400-count sheets

colored fitfully red, your mattress flipped

soft, your shades unworried, your lilies

unanswered. The window is silent, as you

are silent: it is September and you are in love

with a dream of arrival. This year — you can

smell it! — you know it will come. Everything

that needs to. The tang of your memory

like so much past breath.

In September, I remember love. You took

its motion from room to room,

waiting, waiting.

 

 

About the Author

Z.L. Zhou · Swarthmore College

Z.L. Zhou is a poet from Tucson, Arizona and Hangzhou, China; currently living in Princeton, New Jersey, in his other life, he is also a linguist. “In the north room” first appeared in Small Craft Warnings, a literary magazine of Swarthmore College.

About the Artist

Shiya Wu · Wheaton College

Shiya Wu graduated from Wheaton College in 2015 with a BA in Studio Art with a minor in Psychology, and is currently working on an MFA in 2D Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art.