By Emma Large.

Twin Lantau houses swelter empty

Most of the year round, even their walls

Never touch. Named like siblings,

Green and White Jade; in equal spirit, 

In perpetual, feverish row. Air like anger

Ripples between them, too heavy

To hold itself straight: crumpling under

Heat and water, the kind of weight

That billows out like an oiled flag, the way

It rose up in the dusk. Then we wait

Until their edges dissipate to a truce

By darkness; all our gentleness

Comes back in the instinct, the grazing

Fingers against her knee,

The quiet vows in kitchen light.

My father hates this house, I think;

The insects purr too thick

In the garden, our anklebones

Are stubbed with bites. And I suppose

He felt its daylight loneliness,

The fury of a body’s ritual

That takes it blind, by night; the same

Rites that soften the longest fall,

The heart’s sweat and rise

Through old tides, its struggle to the drop down.

Same walls make quiet passage for love:

Slips, goes, no sound.