Tamara Raidt
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We Walk, Made of Silk

I touch you abruptly
            like the mountain touches the climber
and not                        the other way.
 
It is always      the mountain that
          touches.
 
Vienna,
 
          evening.
Me      
 
          in a silk dress.
 
There’s one bench on which we sit
            differently
 and I think it knows, the city knows
 
we are here for a reason.
 
               I dream of being
a roof
              curved, ridged, soaked
in rain.
 
Tell me it’s absurd
roofs                need to be        stable
 
tell me stories of homes
of fire around them, of trees that think
they are the forest
buildings that think they are trees.
 
Take me to the house where grass
grows on
           windows
 
take me to the highest point
            of the city and tell me
it’s not mad men who built it
but they were also
            mad women like me, scorned, hurt,
 
            tell me I’m not the only one
to hear the bells afar without the church.



 
Tamara Raidt is a 24-year-old writer from France. She reads Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in Rattle Poetry, Variant Literature, and has been shortlisted for the New Voices Contest 2022 by Frontier Poetry.    

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