To An Unknown Woman at the Opera, by Valerie Ang

In the Loge, by Mary Cassatt (USA). 1878.

To An Unknown Woman at the Opera

​I want to hold you with an open
hand: a weightless body, like a moth
alighting on my palm, then winging

off again. I do not wish to speak
to you, or close myself around you
(though, I must confess, it would be nice

to be the arm on which you lean, the
ear in which you drop a whispered joke)--
what if you lisp, or smell of garlic,

chatter only about shoes? But veiled
in shadow, you are made perfect, a
powdered pout, a cheekbone angled high,

a riddle of a face. Remain that
way, as I remain a puzzle to
the man who watches me: a creature

of the intermission, framed within
a fickle lens for just a minute,
undeciphered still, and unpossessed.

Valerie Ang

Born and raised in Singapore, Valerie Ang is a student of LASALLE College of the Arts' MA in Creative Writing programme. She loves queer lit and mythology, and is the proud owner of a three-foot stuffed whale.