Isolde Giese and Hans Christian Cars met behind the Iron Curtain in 1965. To facilitate Giese’s escape and the couple’s subsequent marriage, Cars earned his pilot’s license and successfully flew her across the border.

Where white is surrender, red is come here,
a challenge, calling for the danger.
I will engage with your fury.

She was born to have a fire-bellied love,
Isolde, born to love across borders and walls.

Her scalpel cut a clean seam at the laboratory table,
but guarded maps are harder to parse.

He was not born to fly,
but the red scarf was fire enough to hold his eye
and she called him down,

standing in the wheat grass,
hair curled like a conch over each ear,

secured with a single brown barrette.
Come here.

           Come toward danger, and I call you to me.
           We will have no half measures of living.

Jennifer LeBlanc earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her first full-length book, Descent, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020) and was named a Distinguished Favorite in Poetry (2021) by the Independent Press Award. Individual poems have been published or are forthcoming in journals such as Consequence, Solstice, Nixes Mate Review, San Pedro River Review, and The Main Street Rag. Jennifer is a poetry reader for Kitchen Table Quarterly. She was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize and works in the English Department at Tufts University.