The Black Napkin Volume 1 Issue 4 | Page 27

22

four poems by noura jaber

ache

do you ever get sore

carrying the both of us

in your throat?

sometimes i swear i hear myself

in the bruised tenor

of your voice.

sometimes when we fight

i swear

i don’t know

whichone of us

is clawing their way

out your mouth.

TRAIN WRECK

April 2011:

The woman in the green sweater turned her head toward me

Slowly - as if her gaze could stall what was about to happen,

The catastrophe coiling in my tense posture.

I don't remember her face when she locked eyes with me

Only that her hair was brown.

She looked like someone watching a train wreck

Which is to say, in this version of the memory I am the train

And my body is the one that does the damage, collides

Headfirst with something more breakable than itself

Before it can stop.