» Poetry

3am

Sleepless, I walk A1A, right down the middle, feeling the road warm under my bare feet. Street reflectors glow orange, like little matches that light the way. Waves crash, and a distant car echoes this way or a frog chimes, soft reminder I’m not alone. Sometimes I walk until the sun touches the horizon, and blue jays warm the air with lust. At home, he sleeps on his right, arms and legs curled around a pillow. Yesterday, he teased: How does it feel to want? Sometimes the moon is a gold thumbprint in the indigo above a dark ocean. Sometimes nothing more than a slice through sky. Sometimes stolen, gone with clouds thick as dreams.

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Emily Jalloul

Emily Jalloul is a Lebanese-American poet and PhD student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee where she serves as editor for Grist: Journal of Literary Arts. Her previous work has been published or is forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Gravel, Juked, Origins, The FEM, and The Offing, as well as others.