Asami Writes to Korra for Three Years

                            That night, thickened with summer, beneath a bridge
illuminated by gold-trimmed lanterns, we blurred the pond
        with watching.

                                You told me about the dream in which you were the last bird
                    in the world, born an elegy to flight, how you woke grieving
the animal you could have been
                            with the ferocity of a wound’s gaping mouth,

                                                enjoyed the moment you had no one left
                            to disappoint before remembering why. My love,
                                                                                what we make of loss is a sport
                                                            that kills us.

                                    Your daily return to the knife-point of a burning city,
        planting loyal bones in the earth
                    to beg for those faces the soil now mothers.

                                    Despite the birds being gone, the falling of other things
                to the earth so slowly we could almost
                                                    find above each growing shadow
                                    a wing shaped from fire.

                    The beloved body that bore you across any distance wept,
I wish the earth only moved when I let it.
                                                        My life, standing still despite this fact
                        is, too, an act of defiance.
                                                It is not the moon’s light that demands our praise

                                        but the distance it travels
                                                                                to reach us.