Some days, I cannot find you anywhere.
I watch for clues while I fold the sheets,
chop cucumbers, rearrange rocks in the garden.
Maybe you’re back on your island,
luxurious with wine and gossipy animals.
In other words, I’ve lost my confidence.
Maybe I could send you a postcard there
with the address “Circe’s Palace, Aeaea,”
and that would be something.
Once, in secret, I start to write it down—
stamps out and everything—but all I can think of
is the word “Aeaea” over and over.
Maybe its cursive loops could reach you
on some red wave and draw you back to me.
Then, as it happens, a glimmer of you arrives
in my mailbox, stamped with a winged foot.
You write to me about your new hobbies:
I fashion gold bangles under my island sun.
They fast cover my arms.
This one is like your slender fingers
clasped around my wrist.
This small miracle I magnet to my fridge.
I touch it walking by, and keep watch for the day
you return to straighten my shoulders
and tug a smile at my lips.
Aza Pace’s poems appear in The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Passages North, Mudlark, Bayou, and elsewhere. She is the winner of two Academy of American Poets University Prizes and an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Houston and is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of North Texas.