Before Dying, The Fox Looks Homeward1
A goji-red stain bleeds across the lawn, eyes swollen
like plums heavy for harvest. You practice Tai Chi
to learn all the new things your old body has forgotten.
I hate you through a window: the construction noise
from your clattering organs, that rusted heart, a chandelier
dangling lower. Your skin, its satin give
against my fist, curled into a nest beneath your left rib.
The fox jerks towards you like a lagging frame from that movie
where the bad guy drew their oiled knife
and you steered my head away.
Limbs hang from the trunk of your body,
dusk-dimmed eyes swing
towards the animal like stage lights.
We all know how tragedies go—this is where soil
sags into swamp, the feral creature
scares the coward into submission,
but I only saw a still frame:
two wounded animals
considering the possibility of surrender,
the comforting ache of an ending.
You must have known I loved you
until heaven. Don’t die on that hill,
yéyé, come back.
Let me lay my eyes on you again.
1 狐死首丘 or hú sǐ shǒu qiū, a Chinese idiom that translates to “A fox dies with its head pointed towards its den.”
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Elaine Liu is a Homo sapiens who draws inspiration from living on both sides of the Pacific. Currently a Senior, Elaine studies Neuroscience at Colby College by day and sleepwalks back to China at night. Recent works have appeared in The Bellingham Review and Folio.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 