Tess Liem

The Future

I am going to quit talking about the future
at the end of the weekend or sooner.

Maybe when we don’t feel
like piles of leaves

or when we learn
to stop regarding snow only

as frozen water waiting to melt.
I’m so over

waiting for things to blow over,
be things they are not.

Soon I’ll figure out something
worth knowing, how to be

someone worth being. I’ll see
a fortune teller

and she’ll have questions for me.
I’ll tell her something about the shadow of a tree,
how it is long but not unlimited.

Light bends through branches and you
will lift up your shirt to show how the sun
traced the line of a northern oak on your chest.

I imagine years passing until you
are not you, but details I know, like how

you pinch your ear lobe when you are not
paying attention while resting

your head in your hand
and how you will come and go,
like dusk, without asking.