In the dreamy and ***** labor of my imagination
I imagine and reimagine us in every light
I gasp
and you sing back all the things I crave
While I write a duet with my tongue on your neck
The distinction of right and wrong
has always been a question of fire
It burns in my blood
and throbs in my body as you hover above me
And my heart relocates between my legs
You've become a hymn on my lips
An obsession
Which turns into panic
The moment you leave the cradle of my arms
I still can't figure out why
Without you
Time collapses
And in my heart there is an unripe grief
Soft and slowly rotting
Until your hips can fit onto mine
Until my lips can swear upon the firm softness of your skin
And claim you as mine
Call it love
But I call it dangerous
A terrifying risk
Of ruining everything
For a few stolen moments of time
We will not get what we want this way
And I want it more than anybody
I want to fly with you and keep flying
I want my hands to knot in your hair
Like roots making you my home
I want each time we kiss full on the mouth to be tender and bold
With possession
Not like a haven we desperately built with crumbling chalk

I walked all day and all night
To arrive in a foreign land
Only to cry at the closed doors of hope
I lay in the bed of the poor
Most people dream of a future
But my dreams are mostly memories
Surrounded by a sea of strangers
I dream of familiar faces I used to know
My barber Hassan
He didn't know the meaning of small talk
When I sat in his chair
Along with cutting my hair
He would sweep away the gripes of daily grind
My neighbour
Auntie Faatimah
Visits me often during my sleep
She's always sat at our dining table
In her flamboyant dress
Her scent
Floral and sweet
Would surround the air like an everlasting hug long after she'd squeezed me in her arms
"Ali, What do you think of Halwah?"
Mother and her share a knowing glance
And that's where it always ends
What does it matter what I think anymore?
I think of her
And that's all that we'll ever be
A thought
Not even destined to be buried beneath the same dirt

It felt like clinging to the mast
of a tiny boat
in a storm stricken sea
We lay naked
penitent
and punished
Like the depictions of atoning sinners
The truck jostled
and hurled our bruised skin against eachothers
When they found us
it was cold and dark
Stood in the open plain space
we shivered
as tendrils of panic escaped in whimpers
in bodies
huddling together
trying not to be seen as one
When I could finally speak
It was a tangle of words
They fell confusingly
some desperate to escape
some of them trying to hide
All of them needing to be heard
but too embarassed to be seen
From that moment on
the distance between all humans would become vast
At some point silence will stretch between us
and I'll always feel all alone
Some would say that I have disconnected from reality
but I had connected too much

Yesterdays walk with me
Lick my wounds
Remind me of words I don't want to remember
Shelter my present with echoes of loving whispers
Those in passing
Make me laugh
Laugh at me
Make me ashamed
Scare me in my dreams
Stop me from doing things
I have taken the path of a cursed woman
What of my words now?
What of a goal? Woebegone all that is not you
It would be a lie to say that I don't still ache for you
That my life will not pass in suffering
What of the soul I sold
For the magic of us felt too much to not believe in?