White Trees
When the white trees are no longer in sight
they are telling us something,
like the body that undresses
when someone is around,
like the woman who wants
to read what her nude curves
are trying to say,
of what it was to be together,
lips on lips
but it’s over now, the town
we once loved in, the maps
we once drew, the echoes that
once passed through us
as if they needed something we had.
From Love and Strange Horses, published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 2011 by Nathalie Handal. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.