Faith Christine: Where Nobody Knows Our Names
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Bud
Fifteen years inside your eyes,
all I smell are flowers cleaving
at stomach lining. How beautiful
the trees are in England. Every April
I find myself falling for the way
their leaves fall for me, spring
into wellspring. Every time
you’re inside me I close my eyes,
seeing shells of cherry blossoms
dancing to songs we listened to
as teenagers. Under this bough
we’re fifteen again. I love
the way you notice how beautiful
the trees are, how you say their names.
Where Nobody Knows Our Names
Words find small footholds, so it’s finally okay
that we're the only ones who know hurt hands
off immortally, year-on-year. Or that if anything
doesn't discriminate it is heart, hurt, your hands
mapping across my waist the safest way for us
to walk home. Despite this, you know your hands
alone can’t protect me from suffocating
on being spat at, the divine dirty hands
that slur. But at least if they don’t say our names,
we can forget. At least my eyes, covered by hands,
can forgive the side-eyeing. At least in this world
we can finally hold hands.
Faith Christine is a poet, philosopher, and public servant. Her poems have been published in FIVE:2:ONE, Pulp Poets Press, Eye Flash, Barren, QLRS, and Rambutan Literary, and elsewhere. She tweets at @philosopherslug.
