BROWSE Columns
✕
I did not give it a name
immediately, this blaze
spreading to life
from a dream, such
was the scare of you
taking my solitude
and making it sting.
I, who hear words before
I recognise things
was too afraid, knowing
that it would escape designation
by meaning all;
that what I saw - you,
defying my sense of gravity,
being so young -
I could never unsee.
Still, I handed you over
all the secrets that glued me
together like wax.
Who were you, for not
returning my gaze, for
a knowledge greater
than hope? For scorching me
thus, with a designation
by fire.
Alexandra Fössinger is an exophonic writer from Italy and the author of the poetry collection Contrapasso (Cephalopress, 2022), and the chapbook Recount and Prophecy (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Her poems are published in numerous journals including Gyroscope Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence, High Window, Oyster River Pages, Feral, Mono, and La Piccioletta Barca. She is one of the winners of Best Microfiction 2024 chosen by Grant Faulkner, and mostly interested in the spaces between things, the tiny shifts in time and space, the overlooked, the unsaid. Her chapbook Recount and Prophecy is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Recount-Prophecy-Alexandra-Fössinger/dp/B0CVNH5WXC/
