Small Monuments to Fear—for Jack Myers

by Ariana Nash

I have made a sister of a stone statue,
who willows her head
into her lap, bending over ferns.
She wakes me up in the morning to ask
if fronds can pass through stone,
as if dew were more transcendent than tears.
           My mirror is smudged
and dusty.  I am dressing
in the reflection of eyes these days, glinting
and glorious there.
I was a woman made of jade
stalking lily ponds in Tokyo but my poem
lied about it.  I stuffed the folds of her body,
her eternal fat, into a jar, where she stands
nose pressed against glass, looking foolish
gulping for air.
           I am not
holding the world close enough.
I should wrap my arms around a telephone pole
and wait for the surges of electricity
to reconnect me to the friends I love too much
to let them see our distance —
the ones I don’t call anymore.
Instead I untwist and rebend paper
clips with love for them —
small monuments to fear.