Nardine Taleb

the naming of things 

1. And, despite it all, this is how I imagine you:
   sitting on a hill, picturing god as a tree 
   and reaching for me like a fountain of water
   craving for palms 
   
   I wanted to name you, as all real 
   things should be named: lover, 
   partner, hope, home, unlocked 
   door, dark 
   basement, a fleeting 
   thought, a moment’s
   dinner, a word, a trashed lyric
   a wound in which I open & open & open 
   
   

2. You didn’t know how to pray. You thought you did. Consider this: looking as a form of prayer. Everywhere we turn with our eyes we are trying to escape where we are. I looked at you long and hard once, you looked
   back. 
   
   Language ruins everything, you said. Don’t name. Just observe. 
   
   

3. The women in my family are pillars.
   We are taught to hold. On a cold day, 
   I held you up, while you grieved. I carried that grief,
   dead skin, like an embrace. I knew we were
   Nothing. I knew, still, that Nothing 
   could be quite heavy. I hope
   you didn’t notice, after you’d driven off, 
   that I had left my hands in your backseat.
   
   

4. 
   : I’ll write you out of me, the writing a sprinting away — or towards — 
   truth. I only know language and how it peels, its commas just
   the edges of a knife. I try on all the mouths of my women 
   to hear your name again and again in different tones. Time heals but it never 
   forgets, and my body stops being a thing of worship, instead becomes
   an ocean with doors.

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Nardine Taleb is an Egyptian-American writer, speech therapist, and Prose Editor of the online literary journal Gordon Square Review based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Passengers Journal, The Knight’s Library Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Emerging Literary Journal, and others. She is a Brooklyn Poets fellow. You can find her at the following social media platforms: Twitter: @nardineta / IG: @nardineta