I

The news reports tell me that the world is burning and everything is dying. Not that it

can be helped, they say. We’re all dying anyway. We can’t help that either. Of course

nothing ever blazes for long enough to burn the illusion of immortality away, to wean

the hunger, to keep our souls from rushing out from the comfort of isolation to

crimping ourselves very thin just so others could fit in, just to have someone to sit in

solitude beside, just so you won’t have to ride home alone. I walk like a somnambulist

blindly making my way through the world by touch alone, hands grappling for other

hands to cling into, any small comfort to get me through the next painful hours of

consciousness. We are all alone. We are all alone and yet somehow, we find each

other; warm creatures looking for another warm animal to love and fear for, to take

care of, to hold then let go.

II

We unfold each other as we fold within each other, finding new spaces to fit our

longing into with a child’s glee, perhaps even a child’s desperation. We learn the lines

of the Other’s body as we wrestle with our own. We learn this in verses, and at night I

whisper them to myself like a prayer to which no saint would ever answer to. I’ll still

teach them to you if you’ll allow me—even if God averts His lonely eye, even if the

saints choose to remain silent so as not to further incriminate themselves. I’ll still

teach them to you. After all, what’s another god to worship?

III

(Maybe God’s silence only means that the rules of martyrdom have changed and

saints are now baptized not in blood but through each other’s touch, each one like a

quiet benediction. Prayer becomes our native tongue, our common language. I am

holding you now. We’re two girls trying to navigate this burning world, navigating

ourselves, and that part might get erased in the process, that part might get swallowed

by History, but at least there’s no way this could possibly get lost in translation. Kiss

me, I say. Sorry if I’m being too direct.)

IV

Is it too late for us? Perhaps. We can choose to love each other and stay gentle and the

world might still go on burning. The world might still eat us alive then spit us out

shredded and bloody and barely human. But we’ll still have the love. Yes, after all that

we’ll still have the love.

© 2019 by maria somera

#sapphic #love #tenderness #wlw #poem

lately I’ve been trying to listen to

the Universe’s point of view

(no one ever listens to that lonely thing)

and the old mother had a lot to say.

did you know that our time here is very short?

we could get a few months, a few years,

maybe seventy, if we’re lucky, but

even seventy years is not that long.

yes, lovers lie all the time; we don’t have

all the time in the world.

we don’t know how many seconds we have left.

hush now, just keep quiet and

forget the things you want to tell me

then remember them right when

you’re about to leave so

you can linger by the door instead of going.

it won’t be enough of course;

Time is not so easily defeated.

in the end you’ll still have to teach me how to let go

I’m sorry, dear, but

I can’t protect you from that.

but now it’s not yet too late

and the sun is still burning even if

it’s just a golden dot in the sky,

so talk to me.

together let’s feed the illusion that

the earth won’t end in seconds if we permit it.

angle your body like you’re about to walk out

and stay right when I don’t expect you to stay.

#love #tenderness #poetry #poem #sapphic #catholicism

© 2019 maria somera

“you love everything,” Apathy told me once

as we languished under the sun’s watchful eye,

and Hate nodded its head in agreement.

well I can’t help it, I was born

cursed with the longing to touch and be touched,

a longing that connects me to my ancestors

and all the previous lovers of the world;

History calls me at night to tell me

I’m not the only one who has gone through

the sorrow of wanting to be merged fully with someone

only to find that you, tragically, remain just as whole.

if you’d cared enough to get your hands dirty and

open me up,

you would have found

that there is a softness in my chest

always threatening to implode.

I feel love inside me like an infected wound

and I know it’s going to kill me before it could save me.

I surrender. Logic says it’s suicide—that friend of mine

has always been too blunt—but anyway,

I have grown weary of carefulness.

I am sick to death of being reasonable,

so let me love anyway.

let it fester.

#love #tenderness #poetry #poem #sapphic

© 2019 maria somera