Published in Issue 63.3: Summer 2024
I was much and no one
thought precious. When I cried,
it was a small event.
I never spoke a word; silence
spoke for me. My pills
were white and summer
yellow. Mood smooth
as a shorn lamb. As the days
slipped, my shadow
slendered until no longer
solely mine. Thought the mirror was
a portrait, I sat so still.
Purchase our Summer 2024 issue, available in print and digital forms.
Leila Chatti is a Tunisian American poet and author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize and the 2021 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and four chapbooks. Her honors include multiple Pushcart Prizes and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati and teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program.
