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.
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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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