My Favorite Kingdom by Li-Young Lee

My favorite door opens two ways: receiving and receiving.

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My Favorite Kingdom

by Li-Young Lee

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My favorite day is Sunday.

My favorite color is
my father’s apple trees in the rain.

My favorite color
is my father’s pear trees
in a cloud of bees.

My favorite day is Tuesday.

My favorite window
looks onto two oceans:

one a house
in various stages of ruin and beginning,

and one a book,
whose every word is outcome,
whose every page is lifelong sentence.

My favorite song is Time.

My favorite dream
is the one in which I stop
with my mother under branches
on the long way home from school.

My favorite room is in the branches
of the apple tree.

My favorite time of day
is when no one can find me.

My favorite door opens two ways:
receiving and receiving. My heart

swings between the ways, from thanksgiving
to thanksgiving, a thousand times a day,

while its naked feet graze
death’s knobby head
a thousand times a day.

Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton, 2009)