June 6, 2023 - “Touch” by Rahil Najafabadi

TOUCH

Of all the chances to be lost in a foreign garden,
I am familiar with the wind and the pity roses
handpicked by our visitor. Through every take
of words said even after hesitance, I said always.
But isn’t every flower untouched the essence of
an unsaid goodbye? I hear it in the song of a sun
that never rises nor steps away from my eyes,
a nightfall in a moment, for the moonlight to just be.
The goodbye is in all our faces looking down,
facing away from the fear of hope being false,
that I will see you instead of touching your monolith.
It's not as otherworldly to hold stone, it’s literally
the most mundane I can turn you, but the sight
is still somewhere in a loss of poetry, found in touch.