sculpture by Yueting (Ada) Wu, RISD Museum
You would’ve gone right in, but I’m waiting to see
what others do. Against the gallery’s hospital white,
this structure is a fever, eight red-pink panels in a circle,
with a space meant (maybe) as a doorway. Each side,
from across the room, had looked like stained glass,
but up close, my slow orbit makes them ripple:
sheets of acetate stapled to wood frames. Wind, rain,
even sun would force their surrender. As a couple enters,
their silhouettes layer over panels that resemble
cells, tissues, capillaries, the wild quiet of a body
that once you trusted enough to forget its incessant work.
When I go in alone, everything rational tells me
I’m inside someone else’s sorrow, but how can grief
be as gorgeous as this? Two months on, and still today
I woke and had to remember all over again, the morning
greeting me like a cat with bright feathers in its mouth.