We lean into each other’s hands like doves. Like two branches of a tree won’t touch for months but suddenly grow into each other until their trunks are fused. Like the sun, every moment, an atom, an apple, sliced open until there’s enough heat to feed us both. Her hand like a quarter, left by the bubblegum machine, the video store I went to as a child and the perfect break of candy between my teeth. My teeth. We stand apart and the ground erupts. Pain is another word for pore, pour, it’s pouring. Rain breaks heat like breath. The day sighs and it’s the ocean’s breath between us, wet and alive, leaning in, leaning in, longing for a form before it disappears.

Sanna Wani is the author of My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022), a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the winner of the...

Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun (Snuneymuxw First Nation), digital design

Sanna Wani is the author of My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022), a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She the poetry editor at Fernwood Publishing, a columnist for Herizons and artist-in-residence with The Seventh Wave magazine. She loves daisies.
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