Genesis
Whitney Rio-Ross I’ve been told to believe every hello is a thousand possibles blooming, color bursting through lonesome gray hung on stretched smiles. I hope that can be true. I’ve also been told to keep talking—about anything, anything at all—and all the babble will water the ash, sprouting a tree of knowledge. And its branches will hide the wild-eyed strangers asking between their appled teeth, Do I seem strange to you? as the sweat and juice pour down their leaf-cloaked bodies. And the boughs will clap for themselves in the wind, hushing his whisper to her: I can give you a name, nothing else. But we learned each other the way we learned winter-- watching the ice crack our frozen reflections, countless pieces of ourselves opened to a silent unknown. I like to believe loneliness can meet itself in another the way two fractured lines frame an emptiness into a shared space. |
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About the Author: Whitney Rio-Ross teaches English at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN. She hold a Master's in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Adanna, The Other Journal, Saint Katherine Review, Windhover, and elsewhere.