FRANCIS HOUSE
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AFTER ORLANDO


​The week after the shooting
            every shower feels like violent
 
baptism—symbolic rebirth
            performed too literally—water
 
too hot, skin too red. I let it blister
            peel it off in layers until I can’t
 
until my body is not a body
            I recognize—becomes a diagram
 
of the bruised blue threads
            of nervous systems, bloody
 
and exposed—and then
            I ask you to hold me.
 
We don’t know any of the dead
            but when they read out the names
 
on the evening news
            we take turns weighing them
 
on our tongues, marvel
            at how something spoken
 
can be so heavy, can choke
            into throat. After that, we shower
 
together. Say their names against
            each other’s pruning skin. Say our own
 
with the same reverence—as if
            for the first time, or the last.

Picture
Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama. Raye earned a BA and MA in English from Auburn University and is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas in Austin. Raye was an honorable mention for poetry in both Southern Humanities Review’s Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York in 2014 and AWP’s 2015 Intro Journals Project, and received grants to attend the Juniper Summer Writing Institute in 2016. Raye's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, Cherry Tree, The Adirondack Review, and elsewhere.
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  • Home
  • About
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    • Room 8
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