OPACITY

by Isabel Cristina Legarda

 

You found the letter I never sent.

I held my breath while you read it,

the light a halo just behind you,

your shadow on the page

a partial eclipse. I could see

my words through the paper

in your hand. You had no words

for me, only deepened lines

in a furrowed brow, your face

a palimpsest of love and hurt.

That night the sheets were rumpled

and tugged and tossed by our unrest;

you wouldn’t let me take my words back,

and by morning we were nowhere,

unable to read each other or see

through the curtain around us

to the world we had once inhabited,

the light of a new day no more useful

than fog, the fabric of us unveiled

by a transparent leaf of words

suspended between us in a sudden gust,

fluttering, fragile against our breath,

hanging on an imaginary line.

* * * * *

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Smartish Pace, FOLIO, The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, West Trestle Review, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published this year by Yellow Arrow Publishing. She can be found on Instagram: @poetintheOR.