Cusp
By Sheikha A.
On worn washboards, I drag
your voice from beyond
like an un-laundered cloth.
You never asked what my
favourite colour was. If your
question came, I would have
pointed to the faraway galaxy
where the belt of Orion stung
like a scorpion's tail, telling you
to see the show of me, a tall
flask of moonlight ending in
a semi-circle on you.
We were cleft tales of the Milky Way,
settling like bespangled sealant
in crevasses of our togetherness.
How we shone as repaired comets
determined our angles of convergence
in the view of glass-peepers, their
wooden minds ever amassing
the stretch of silence that spanned
like endless trails of astro-
fluids strayed in time.
Remember the border
where we conjoined
before a spark of passion
disbanded us.
We were masters,
there, of the game
of elude and escape.
*
Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her works appear in a variety of literary venues, both print and online, including several anthologies by different presses. Recent publications have been Strange Horizons, Pedestal Magazine, Atlantean Publishing, Alban Lake Publishing, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Albanian, Italian, Arabic and Persian. She is the co-author of a digital poetry chapbook entitled Nyctophiliac Confessions available through Praxis Magazine. More about her published works can be found at sheikha82.wordpress.com