Salt
“We are fatally drawn toward anyone who seems to offer a way out of ourselves”,
Joan Didion.
I
At the beginning, the salty smell,
Followed me home, every even day, in the evenings,
As I drove in cabs.
Admittedly, the smell was bizarre to me,
I thought, soma, maybe unbalanced bacteria,
No bother to me anyways, but distinct smell, yours only.
More like a Hound, I dallied picking you up
Then two weeks ago, I began to notice,
It’s not there.
It was always there after washing my face,
After washing my hair,
I would smell your salinity.
Is it possible, I asked you later that week,
That my nose unlearned your otherness,
Selfishly but admiringly,
I suppose, my nose thinks of your smell as mine?
Deconstructed the foreign into Self,
My body is now a site of memories for things I can’t feel
On it, but cherish, despite.
It is a wonder, that now,
I only look at my own body to think of yours.
II
Couple weeks later,
It found me again,
Though it was a happy encounter
As I washed my face and the scent flew me by,
It was wishful thinking to imagine,
I could escape myself to be you for a little while.
I love
I never stopped finding ways to show
That I love,
When I got to his apartment with bags of fruit.
Or the other time I randomly bought him balloons of his favorite color,
I simply wanted to show that I love.
Recently, a new lover gave me a poetry book; Immediately, a challenge, I bought into it.
I showed my appreciation for the book, memorized a poem of it,
the longest one, because of how much
I love.
I imagined one day he only might tell me,
“It was when you recited the poem, That I knew I love too”.
Ghazal Nessari Poortak (she/her) is an Iranian writer and academic. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Rhode Island. Her creative work often incorporates elements of her research in memory and identity. Her most recent creative piece, “The Turnip,” was published as the editor’s choice in the Nature Issue of Litro Magazine.