Travis Lau

Happy Valley

The ladder gets me but half-way
to the cool of your stone, so I
must climb the rest to reach 
the gladiolus wilting into dust,
your silent neighbor until guilt
brings me to your sweeping.
I come this time with your sutra
learned by heart, sweetened only
by the tea and bread you used to
prepare for me just over these
hills that brown over now in
the third year of your absence.
They still call it the happy valley,
a name that never appealed to your
ear more attuned to the pair of
nightingales that stopped singing
when you did not come to hear the
news over breakfast. By the time the
pat of butter had melted, you too
were gone, and I would not brave
the trams with you again thereafter
in the uniform you had patched
with callused fingers needled
to bleeding. The valley has you now,
I know, but I come sweeping only
to beg for something more than your
forgiveness, something that kept
me believing in the wish of a name,
for the middle of mine still carries your own.

--
Travis Lau recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania Department of English. His research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, the history of medicine, and disability studies. His academic writing has been published in Journal of Homosexuality, Romantic Circles, English Language Notes, Digital Defoe, and Disability Studies Quarterly. His creative writing has appeared in The Deaf Poets Society, Wordgathering, Assaracus, Rogue Agent, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology (Handtype Press, 2015). [travisclau.com]