Your name means bitter.

Bitter like distance?
Bitter like bricks as red as blood’s scarlet shadow,
Bound to a land not your own?
Bitter like horseradish, or bitter like the sea?
Bitter like labor, bitter like childbirth,
Bitter like tears,
Salty brine roaming your cheeks?
Is the Dead Sea floating
Through your veins?

Your name means beloved.

Beloved like distance?
Do you harden your heart to love?
Are you guilty in your dreams
Or do you wear white, and run
With God’s beloved
Through the garden.
Beloved like that boy free
From bondage and slavery?
Do you yearn to become the water
Or the basket it carries?
Were you letting a part of yourself go
In that river, Beloved?
Did you watch yourself float
Away from the muddy banks of the Nile?

Caroline Rubin is a 17-year-old poet at the Community School of Naples in Naples, Florida. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals including Parallax Online, Navigating the Maze, Poetry Out Loud Gets Original Anthology, and the Live Poets Society Anthology “Of Faith and Inspiration”. Additionally, her work has been recognized by the Scholastic National Art and Writing Competition and she is the Naples Branch winner of the English-Speaking Union’s 2022 Shakespeare Competition. Through her poetry, Caroline aims to explore the existential questions that keep her awake at night.