George Abraham

from UNIVERSAL THEORY IN WHICH EVERY FAILED ATTEMPT AT LOVE IS A SOULMATE FROM AN ALTERNATE TIMELINE

In another life, we married
beneath a murder of
honeysuckles; it could have been
mistaken for eloping – how we ran 
until our parents were not 
our parents, & nothing was 
our own, but the wind, that mothered
nothing but blade after stampeded
blade behind us, until there was 
no us to behind – we grew 
old together, spent most of 
our life in the same woods 
where you would take your final
breath – I wanted to call it
peaceful; though, godless, 
your last image would end with widened 
pupils & twinning flames; I know this 
because you would inherit its smoke 
(less god) for eyes, in the next life & the next & 

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian American poet and PhD candidate at Harvard University. They are a Kundiman fellow, a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), and the author of Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020).