Green Tea Leaves – a poem by Jacqueline Jules

Green Tea Leaves


You spoon them 
from a square red tin,
dark and dried, slim
as grains of brown rice.

They unfold
like rose buds.

Clear liquid becomes 
fragrant. Flows 
with honey color.

Sipping together
after a long absence,
my heart is a tea leaf

swelling beneath 
the sweet steam
of your presence.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, 2016 winner of the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize by Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including The Paterson Literary Review, Potomac Review, and Imitation Fruit. She is also the author of 50 books for young readers, including Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence (Albert Whitman, 2020) She lives in Arlington, Virginia. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com