Vera Hadzic
Your Name on My Tongue
The sound of your name on my tongue
Is sweet and secret and swollen with
The crackling of syllables; between each
Letter is a gulf of memory, snippets of
The past clinging to every stray dot on
Your i’s, to every loose curl of your y’s;
When my saliva sloshes against the nooks,
The hidden creases of your name, it rushes
Over the supple filmy shimmery webs of the
Future; I imagine all the times your name
Will make a home in my mouth and how
I will say it differently each time; the lines
And the curves and the secret tremors of
Your name will crawl over patches of eternity
Like moss and your name will grow against the
Branches of time like snake-green vines
Winding around a garden trellis and
Wind-pale flowers will sprout in the valleys of
Its vowels but for now it’s enough for
Only me to say it, over and over again.
Is sweet and secret and swollen with
The crackling of syllables; between each
Letter is a gulf of memory, snippets of
The past clinging to every stray dot on
Your i’s, to every loose curl of your y’s;
When my saliva sloshes against the nooks,
The hidden creases of your name, it rushes
Over the supple filmy shimmery webs of the
Future; I imagine all the times your name
Will make a home in my mouth and how
I will say it differently each time; the lines
And the curves and the secret tremors of
Your name will crawl over patches of eternity
Like moss and your name will grow against the
Branches of time like snake-green vines
Winding around a garden trellis and
Wind-pale flowers will sprout in the valleys of
Its vowels but for now it’s enough for
Only me to say it, over and over again.
Biography
Vera Hadzic (she/her) is a writer from Ottawa, Ontario, currently studying English literature at the University of Ottawa. In the past, her work has been published in Bywords.ca, Fever Dream, and Crow & Cross Keys. She can be found on Twitter @HadzicVera.
