— for Kim So: the heart opens glistening in the chest, wet like the tinsel branches of the palm tree standing tall in sun after rain, after a day so gray nothing could shine. The heart shines; then it convulses, longing, as usual, to touch and hold. It expands and contracts a few billion times — that’s what hearts do. The palm tree glitters for nothing and no one. Stands through rain, sun — that’s what palm trees do. You are too beautiful, the heart cries bitterly, pulsing like orgasm around the gleaming world, the monumental, never-to-be-grasped beauty of the world. The palm tree says nothing. High, impossibly high in its branches grow the ripened dates.