George Abraham

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

In the not-quite-dream, I cooked
for you, wearing nothing 
but an apron – light
-thirsty, in the window’s thievery
of autumn, you held me & there was no need
for sound there – in that life,

you choked me & both of us
wanted it. In that life, 

I learned to call adoration the distance 
between crush & heart
-eyes, just as I learned to define kink 
as the distance between two secrets; & you –

neither adam’s 
apple, nor stilleto’s heel, but the choke between
two knotted forms of surrender – 

tell me about the drowning
city of you, of flood & lung 
puncture; how we familiared
the familiar until we became
unrecognizable – my face
contorted into every every

thing & no face at all; two 
roads neither con- nor die- 
verging, but parallel – I could make 
a sad & failed canon from all that was
unspoken between us: slip 

of. Automata of. Petals pressed 
into. Follicle of. Crushed
pipe of. Gorge and. I could go 

all night if you let me – the road’s long 
babe, might as well buckle up & call it eternity

’s unresting door – I fever-dreamt 
you, timeless – I made you – I 
made you up – in this way, 

you were a window –

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).