A dream can kill you.
Blood streaming from
me not equal to its loss.
I’ve never possessed the faith required.
My future holds
no promise of green.
The wind in the tree
a negative thing.
I was there as the body of
leaves, for a moment, lifted
like a voice at the end
of weeping, like a question
after a door closes.
Equinox
Leila Chatti
Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and the author of Deluge and four chapbooks. Deluge won the 2021 Levis Reading Prize and the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award.
Originally published:
December 6, 2023
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