dedicated to Jean Assy
Always the one driving
others to the airport –
never the one boarding
a plane,
I watch passengers
walk idly by
from one
terminal
to the next.
Jesus would’ve asked me
to turn the other cheek
though you only ever ask me
to ignore and be happy.
But I can’t rise
each time I trip
over my own
indiscretions.
I can only engage
in banal
conversation.
So I’ll trade you my heart
for one of your kidneys
if you’d give me one of your lungs
in exchange for my liver.
We’d keep this organ-barter
going back and forth till
it becomes
unclear where each
organ belonged
so that perhaps
when your heart beats
I’d feel it pound
in my chest,
and when I would
take a deep breath
your own perfume
would percolate
in and out
of your lungs
as we both
understand
solitude sublimated
is the wiser solution
for most problems;
it’s just
one person
short
of making it
tolerable.
Jessy Bissal
Jessy Bissal is a 25 year-old Armenian Lebanese currently living in Lebanon. She earned her BA in English Literature, Minor in Creative Writing, and M.A. in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. At present, she is a University Instructor, teaching English at various institutions in Lebanon (AUB, LAU, NDU). Poetry is something she does on the side. She never has, nor ever will make poetry her 'job' because if she were ever to do that, she feels she would have tainted the one release that brings her such joy in her spare time. That said, finding the time to write is easy for Jessy, because she never forces herself to sit down and write; she writes when the words suffocate her and slither their anaconda-body around her neck, pull tightly against her lungs and force her to spit them out.
