‘wasteland’ was voted by WSA-R community members as Literary Work of the Week (January 27 – February 2, 2025).
They say love is simple,
a trembling hand reaching another.
But my hands, only ever holding cold tea mugs,
swing like bells in an abandoned chapel,
never heaven speaking upon your lips,
lingering enough for me to dream.
(Excuse me—
there is no graceful way to describe this hunger,
without sounding starved.)
If love is a stone skipping—
it skims water but never sinks here,
leaving this earth a wasteland, baby,
starving for rain.
(Sometimes I see it,
reflected in your windows:
table set for two,
or in the flicker of your Instagram stories,
reposted on your birthday.
It’s obscene, isn’t it?
To want something
I’ve only seen through a fragile glass.
or smudged with fingerprints.)
Tell me,
am I too much of a poem,
and too little of a woman,
for being an atheist who wants to die a believer—
who lays herself bare as a sacrifice,
begging you to kneel before her,
and ruin her into something divine.
(There are no hymns sung,
no candlelit processions,
for girls who grow twenty-one
without ever being touched.)
I don’t want love to arrive
like summer rainstorms—
fleeting, feral, a deluge
that is always happening somewhere else
but here.
I don’t want to wonder
if love is a midnight phone call
or a prayer to fill your empty spaces when
you’re desperately burning for her—
or something that only happens to her,
like vintage wines, or redemption,
salvation,
or your hands.
