There are so many things that I want to tell you
[ Vivian DiGennaro ]

There are so many things that I want to tell you

How between us there was a heat. How the object of my hands &
the object of your skin left me with an insensible drunkenness
of flesh & feeling.
Tell me you remember how quiet the world was and I’ll remind you
how we used the silence as a space to confess. You were the altar I knelt
before night after night after—Tell me you remember
how the sky burned alongside of us, how we had to place our palms against water
before placing them on each other.
How did we watch the wind through the branches of my neighbor’s
tree and not know that we too were as vulnerable as night
when the sun refuses to quiet its relentless fire?
Tell me you remember & I’ll tell you the same &
in that way we will move into tomorrow
never wondering if the touch that burns us on nights we are alone
is yours.
Is mine.

Vivian DiGennaro (she/her) is a high school English teacher, a mother of two boys, a novice vinyl record collector, avid reader, and writer. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from CUNY Queens College. Her poems and translations have been featured in decomP; Mead: The Magazine of Literature and Libations; Aldus, A Journal of Translation; samfiftyfour, Rill and Grove Poetry Journal and as part of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project in May of 2022.