I cut short my confession before your name came
up. There’s a record of you everywhere. I disen-
tangle streets from our memories. This is a resp-
onse to the arc of love. This is the expected ending.
Some moments are pure lovely. Terrifyingly un-
familiar. There are some things that are true. Like
a pantheon of futures draped in sacred colors. There
were days empty and frantic before you. Everything
is now a hinge poem. I peer on either side. I am an-
xious about key copies. Silver threats discarded in a
city. Where I come from we hoard gold—make it
beloved over a body in the rain. You’ve got a way
of curving your weapon to hit the word-vein. You
’ve got it—the turn of a moment, the decision to
kiss. It’s all so inevitable. The thrill of forever in-
terrupting destiny
Marcella Haddad is the author of WITCH HOUSE (Ghost City Press, 2022) and her novella, SIDEWINDER, is the winner of Gateway Literary Press’s Fabulist/Surrealist Novella Competition and is forthcoming in 2023. She earned her MFA from UMass Amherst and was a Tin House YA 2022 Scholar. She teaches writing at Grubstreet and Clarion West and is the Managing Editor of Moonflake Press. Her work has appeared in Variant Literature, Okay Donkey, Empty Room Radio, Apparition Lit, and others. You can find her in a tree or at marcellaphaddad.com
Snarl 