by Ivani Atre
Requiem
I will always remember you this way:
softened under the sun, in tones of pinks and greens.
The beige sea building a current in the
dip between your collarbones, swelling under your jaw.
In laughter, in the scraping of the toe of your shoe against my jeans,
Like this we spend our youth, like a currency:
Like a way of saying “I know this.
I know you, I know exactly where the light
refracts across your elbows and knuckles, the balls of your heels.
I know this, I know nothing.”
And have it hold its weight on my tongue.
Even as my skin
Grows heavier on my bones, the greens and reds behind my cheeks flushing
into grays and purples. I will hold us here,
on this fabric sinkhole—
Cradling the divots of your hips, and mine, softly.
As if the world were trying to tell us
About the tenderness that arises when
your pulse meets mine, when we are cheek-to-cheek,
Arm-in-arm,
In the grass somewhere. Telling the birds things we do not say with breath,
but rather through the absence of it.
I will always remember you this way,
in the palms of my hands, in the shapes of branches,
in the impressions you leave on the couch.
In the way the world rattles and shakes every morning:
gently at first, and then
all at once.
Ivani Atre (she/her) is a Dallas-based poet and Cognitive Science student at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her work has previously been selected as both the Easterday and Best of Issue (Winter 2021-2022) winner for Just Poetry!!!, the National Poetry Quarterly, and makes an appearance in Silent Sparks’ "Awesome Poetry" collection. You can find her cafe-crawling, collecting houseplants, and on Twitter/Instagram @ivaniatre or TikTok @stripmallheart.