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.

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