The Open Sesame of My Mouth Rains

bright, intestinal red inside a green station 
wagon digesting gas storage tanks, 

harbor cranes, the New Jersey Turnpike.
We are a family between arrivals,

not allowed to call New York City home, 
or say I love Grandpapa but not Grandmere.

I look back to see how far we’ve come.
I look forward, afraid to move, waiting for a car

door to open, a dog to bark, hello,
your run across a frozen river, 

empty-handed, longing to be saved.  
We drive to Damascus—for decades—

all our eyes flick the rearview mirror,  
blind to the dark overcome by the light.

EVALYN LEE

Evalyn Lee is a former Emmy Award–winning CBS News producer and lives and writes in London. She has produced television segments for CBS’s 60 Minutes and the BBC. It has been Evalyn’s honor to write for Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, and Lesley Stahl while covering a wide range of stories, including both Gulf Wars and numerous investigative pieces. She studied English literature at Princeton University and New College, Oxford. Her essays, short stories, and poems have been published in over 80 literary magazines and she is currently at work on her first poetry collection.