songs in the key of A
that spring i forgot to notice the rain. thinking i could fold you into my pocket & carry you around the winding roads at night. i wanted the dream, i wanted the blossom of you under the crescent moon/ today you recite al kauthar, holding the words of God in your mouth like guava seed to molar/ i hold your name in my mouth like red to hibiscus/ it is the lilt of tongue,
a qasida for the liminal space/ the longer light! the longer light/
but imagine the voice as a memory of the womb. unhinge what needs
unhinging.
//
i trace the three scratches on my back. convinced of jinns at the precipice of maghrib. i tell you to avoid the trees & swallow the dawn. forget the muchness of things. remember instead, curls pressed against a pillow. that is to say,
your stomach.
//
& i dim within myself. watching the movement of your hands at the sink/ thinking of their warm weight in mine/ thinking of shouting my love & waiting for the sky to burst open, the ground to shake in zalzala / for you to drop the dish, watch it shatter,
& shout back.
Fatima Elbadri is a Sudanese-American poet residing in the Midwestern United States. Her writing includes themes of culture, communal experience, and liminal spaces.