Nathalie Handal

drag you across the risky waters,

where the distances are longer,

where pain has laws.

On your face a wave as long as a tomb,

behind you, the cities you left,

all moved, like winded and un-winded

hearts. I look for your bruises,

knowing some damages are irreparable.

I listen: No one dies in the sea alone.

I wonder how it’s possible,

decades later, across continents,

not to find all the parts of you I need.

I take you back to the waters,

take you back to the waves,

to the blue we break and unbreak.

We enter. We get lost. And salt, salt, salt

holds the sea in us, the way desire

holds distance, and deities hold death.

Listened to the sea play to us in A minor. The first scale we learned.

I leaned on the light of our past, wore a white flowing dress.

My heels pointy, like the end of a war with my mother

or the nation. Or the city traffic. The things we say to stay. Ourselves.

You said, Let’s go to the tip of the mountain. There, we watched the waves

down below, and forgot where we were, where we were about to go. I knew

heaven was just a vinyl stereo with no speakers. That a kiss would keep all

we were about to lose. That time is a hole. Humming all it takes to awake roars.

Why didn’t we practice singing? Or listened more deeply when they said,

Blood of my blood, you’ll never have a country but cut my veins and make it

your land. Were these their sentences? Were we born or alive yet?

Where are they now? Which earth are they buried under?

Which heaven holds their hearts? How many bodies must we become

to dream a dream that we can trust, or is there another side to this story?

Who knows what it takes to break a heart?

To invent a word that is full of life, a world that is full of words that help us stay.