"The Aorist"
A poem by Elisa Gonzalez
This is the Good Grief Spotlight Series.
This week, we’re sharing a poem from Elisa Gonzalez’s debut poetry collection Grand Tour (2023). Gonzalez is a New-York based poet, author, and fiction writer, and a recipient of the 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. You can read more about her here.
The Aorist
When I set this mouch of mine to talk talk talk
I've undone it. Poor tongue
gathering scraps of Turkish
to speak with you.
Your English says, When there was not
the two of us this hand
of mine still
reached for you.
Use this tense,
my textbook directs,
only when an action is
neither past nor present nor future.
I think, What freedom,
until I learn that only habit comes untied
from time. When we spend ourselves every morning
in the same bed. When we practice.
To kiss, to go down, to come.
To stroke. To lift. To stray. To laugh.
To sleep, and of course to take, to give.
Yet you still don't know
where this hand of mine has traveled,
and I know when I touch
myself no one gives me anything--
How to tell you, The urge to run comes
from time to time?
Your morning murmur: I'll put the coffee on.
Why tell me, when you always do?
When messenger wind alarms the shutters.
When jasmine whirls through the gap.
When I rise. When I dress.
When I shut. When I goodbye.Thanks for reading. Feel free to check out our archive of past work— both our own poetry, and the poetry from those we love and feel inspired by.
