Drawing Rooms

Genre: Lyric Essay

Feng Shui,
the art of placement and balance,
the art of 'put the chair right here,'
is nothing without Qi-
a word difficult to translate,
but meaning literally:
'steam over uncooked rice.'

But more than this, because translations are difficult
and require more than this, Qi is the natural order,
Qi is how things should be. and Feng Shui is when
humans try to find it. Try to find where this Ikea chair naturally belongs.

Feng Shui relies on Qi.
Feng Shui assesses the quality of the local environment,
it looks at the map and makes notes of the effects of space and weather -
that is to say, Feng Shui is qimancy, or qi divination

I know this now, after the night I absent-mindedly thought
to myself, standing alone in my bedroom, 'I miss R.'
I thought this, but I could not remember his face, could not see his body.

And so I tried to find his Qi. Tried to find his natural order:
I had rearranged the furniture since he left.
The night that he left the furiture was different.

I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember the map
of how things were.
It felt as though I had lost my map of him,

R.

I, trying at best, I told myself that he was an area
(a country? a province?) that if I had been–
if I had visited as many times as I mentioned his name
I could remember.

I needed reminders,
because everyone needs reminders, R. held that policy.
And suddenly I could remember the stickit notes,
the reminders that were on the wall above the desk.

I found some and put them there, where he once had put them.
But still, I could not remember. I felt I lost my map of him,

R.

I tried and tried – spoke soft, trying to hear his voice in my own.
I even stroked my own arm, trying to feel his touch in my own.
And when rubbed my stubble against my own shoulder,

I could feel the sand, and suddenly I saw the beaches where R. was raised.

But it only drew so much from me and I could feel nothing when I touched my hair,
So I pulled at my scalp, used my own hands to pull, gritted my fists,
tufts of hair strangled to
red-cheeked exhaustion.

Because there was pain too. And with that thought I remembered his fist.
But my mere touching wasn’t enough, to see the rest of him I needed to see
the room as he had left it, and so


At five in the morning, when my mind was long departed, 12 hours of ‘icantremember,’
I decided on a diagram, to make a map of him,

R.

The room as he had left it - the bed – it went high in the corner of my loft, a cliff from which he had once pushed me.
The room as he had left it - the table – by the door, the mountain on which I landed.

The map as he had left it - the paintings on the wall were dropped and leaned
against the walls which needed stains – I used coffee grounds and ketchup packets.

The chair, naturally, on its side.

And when I was done I remembered:

He was much more like a room where fights or floods had swept.
Ebbed up carrying all the dust and lampshades and descended down leaving
domestic life where only floods and fights could, their natural order:

on the floor, like me – more like a room than I had remembered.