Tender like a sparrow’s claw on snow / I touched you into a wince / your ribs angled away from me / muscled a ridge of space between us / we held hands in the shadow of a mountain / then / desert sunsets come to mind / charges of blues and pinks / fires of orange at the horizon / my touch / an emblem of try / a flicker of maybe I will be safe, we will be safe / when I touched you then / we were distracted from childhood hurt / and the marathons of where is safety? / my fingers like fire on your skin.

This morning, I lay in a room lined with trees of life. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played from speakers on a shelf, and while the touch of a woman pressed into my shoulders,

I thought of you, 

how like crystal touch must feel 
to you, confetti of glass, 

how sharp it must be, 
and I wished your mother 
had been soft.  

Deanna Benjamin

writes prose and poetry. Her work appears recently in Hippocampus Magazine, The Texas Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Willows Wept, and other venues. Deanna’s debut collection Blue Ionia & other poems will be published by Finishing Line Press in Fall of 2026.

Author’s website: https://pictures-words.com/about-us/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Lilacs by Deanna Benjamin in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 30, September 2025); nominated for Best Microfiction 2026.

⚡ Rescue Mission in Cosmic Daffodil Journal (Issue XII, 2025: The Body Archive ebook, page 18).