• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contact
    • Donate
  • Issues
    • Covid Stories
  • FAQs
  • Submit

i heard your name

By Nila Narain

today and i didn’t plan time to wallow
in your absence, so i was splattered with

the lack of you again, bathed in loss so sweet
i almost mistook it for your hands

running down my chest. i can’t help
the cringe my face coils into when i hear

silverware scraping against porcelain.
or the way i dig my nails into my tingling

calf to coax it out of numbness. i flinch
when the walls crack their knuckles.

i don’t have a reflex for you. i’m stuck

in this hellhole where phantom hands
send chills down my body in the way i always

wanted you to touch me. when the white of
the snow sheets slapping against my window

catch my eye, i prepare to converse with
the ghost of you. the hairs on the small

of my back rise in the outline of your
handprint— my body still a snow angel

you keep coming back to make.

 

 

 

Nila Narain (they/he) is a queer Tamilian poet and creator studying computer science and creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They have previously been published in Serotonin Poetry, giallo lit, and perhappened. In their spare time they like to sing, dance, and stress-craft.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Winter Poems 2022

Copyright © 2023 · Site by Sumy Designs, LLC