so she fell, easily forgetting
how the letters of his name
curved into a warning: slanting
and with the same sharp edges
as the sadness he left to bloom
in her heart, beating against a cage
of bone: a flock of birds, injured
but struggling to take flight.
The best of affection
I was to know
came with the swiftness
of a single blow.
Maybe it’s your lack
of interest that interests me,
how you stay
silent and bound
to your books, yet never to the words
I speak: syllables I send out
to cast ripples in the narrow horizon
between us, the air
so quiet, drowning my sentences
to sleep, even before they reach the soft margins
of your ears, lulling this scene into a dream, dousing
the ink of our names into white pages
we wake up to, once
morning sun swims in, the reticent traces
of an alphabet laid to dry on our lips.
Like a book closed,
creases turned clean, shelved back,
left to wait or wilt.
A piece of mine got published here.
Go check it if you love me [ctrl + f "alyza" to find it].
Go read the rest of the awesome anthology too.
What do you know about the things I do? What do you know about the sadness that wells up within me each time I see the movement of vehicles in this strange, strange city ; those things and all these people walking with such slowness that even their shadows choose to tarry (swiftly swimming through windows and doors and the holes of locks), unmindful of everything else around them – as if speed could be given some sound that could in turn be muted at ease – what do you know about the air around you? Has it ever spoken to you? Have you heard its voice, felt that slight sound slither into your ears, make its way to your throat – just so it could plant its message there -
Trace its words, map out that strange alphabet you once knew in dreams.
Try to remember: we had different names before this.
Remember the sound: how we wore them in our mouths, how they floated with ease, dancing in the air.
Try to remember: what was it we had that couldn’t be ripped by these human voices?
upon the first touch
you retreat from my fingers:
like waves from the shore.
