Brooke Sahni | For the wild lavender | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Brooke Sahni is the author of Before I Had the Word (Texas Review Press, 2021), which won the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Divining (Orison Books, 2020), which won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly, Missouri Review, The Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, 32 Poems, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. Her new collection of poetry, In This Distance, is forthcoming in 2025.

Brooke Sahni's Website

Also by Brooke Sahni: Before I Had the Word Divining Moon

December 11, 2024

Brooke Sahni

For the wild lavender

and the distance between us and the moon. Us being us, we have to name it. Put small words to a large thing. Beautiful, silver, full. I love you but will not tell you in what ways, and this is what keeps my desire full. There are lines I could write like, my love for you is a hidden swell, just for the pleasure of imagining you crossing it out. There is a wild lavender bush lit by the moon. And when I muddle its purple between my fingers, drawing it to my neck, I remember you are sensitive to smell. I apologize and you say, It’s not like I am going to nuzzle you — so maybe this is an elegy, for the scent on my skin, bittersweet reminder of all the ways you will not touch me. No — this is an ode. For the lavender and for the moon, too, for the ecstatic distance that keeps me begging, silently, for you.

"For the wild lavender" was conceptualized and written as part of a full-length manuscript that explores the relationship between distance and desire. The book, which is coming out next year, is in conversation with Esther Perel, a contemporary relationship therapist, who talks a lot about the importance of distance in order to maintain romantic desire. When we are too close to someone, it is often difficult to see them fully. It’s only when mystery exists that we are pulled closer.