Gordan Struić
Houseplant
I water it
the way I once spoke to you –
too little,
then too much.
Leaves curl like tongues
learning to pray.
Soil exhales
the smell of something
half-alive.
The pot sweats.
Roots press
against their limits.
Sunlight
reaches in,
a hand that won’t commit.
I tilt the saucer,
watch the overflow darken
the windowsill.
When the stem bends,
I whisper
as if it could still listen.
Back to Issue XIV…
Gordan Struić is a Croatian lawyer and poet writing in English and Croatian. His poems appear or are forthcoming in 34th Parallel, Half Mystic, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Ink Sweat & Tears, Headlight Review, Lana Turner, and others. In 2025, he received a Special Recognition Award at the international Beyond Words poetry contest in Trieste. His work explores intimacy and distance, the tension between silence and disclosure, and the fragile overlap of the digital and the human. He currently lives in Zagreb.
