Ischia, June 2022

after Jenny Xie

We arrived lost. Tyrrhenian salt dried on my forehead. I made peace with unforgivable sun and never being found. An eruption of holidays empty into the port. I quietly signal that I will pick up where these travelers left off. Offer to collect their empty glasses. When no one looks, I even tip them back to taste another life.

From the hotel’s perch, I memorize volcanic crevices and creases unfolding. Count each finger, wiggle each toe. From the taxi, I absorb all of the ruts imperfecting the precariously beautiful drive to the thermal pools. The view spreads out like a centerfold taunting me to never leave.

Chased the high and sunrise in front of the Pantheon a few days ago. My black linen dress collected cigarette burn hole souvenirs. When in Rome, I say.

I settle in a dream after a swim trying to discern salt from sun. I settle on they both sanctify. I recount on my fingers and toes the moments I forgo the need for translation. I became an American girl last night. Drank from my own glass. Danced until I didn’t want to. Took a smoke break without something to light. Just myself. I belong to June skies, even in Ischia.

As I step out of the bar and into the port, a message from a ghost floodlights my phone. How many years have passed between us? How many more will pass us after?

Your shadow lingers
while I learn to release you,
mine to never know.

Shivani Kumar is a writer from Worcester, Massachusetts, who has been writing poetry for over a decade. Her work pulls a reader into a world where they can find themselves arriving to limitless emotions and memories that can nurture radical healing. She is working on my debut poetry book that focuses on the themes of community, belonging and identity as a Tamil-American woman seeking meaning in fragmentation. Her work can be found in Chicago's South Side Weekly's The Exchange column and Sixty Inches From Center and is forthcoming in Vagabond City Poetry. She resides in Chicago, where she can be found attending open mics, buying yet again another book or taking in the magnificent lakefront.