/manzil
(where I landed up)

Every now and then, a wild thing wanders into your apartment, smelling of the forest. She makes an intricate spiderweb of lullabies like lace with her mouth.

(you are a flood
I should have known sleeping next to you
I’d wake up in a riverbed)

موقع/mauka
(what comes up)

When I came to the bar, asking strangers for directions, shivering a little with a map inscribed in my palm,
you said your heart was healing
and left a tiny crack in mine.
along an ancient fault line.
(what kind of four leaf clover am I.
lucky charm for everyone but myself)

you probably knew this already because my eyelashes told you everything I couldn’t say with all their insistent fluttering.
Being with a heart that’s taken
leaves no room for an imagination
that wants to kiss your singing mouth on a street, show you off to everyone I meet, paint you in your sleep, make your body sigh, turn off the heat and whisper to you like moon to tides:
“come a little closer”

مرضى/marzi
(what I chose)

last night I think I said more than I ought to.
Wrapped my sulphur fingers too closely into yours. (they’ve been inside volcanos and knew how to find their way to you)
I did that bad-guest thing, where i fall in love and forget to do the dishes and light too many candles, and almost start a fire and drink too much wine and make a shrine in your sheets. I invoke a drowning goddess and whisper prayers and giggle into your pillows and press stolen roses into your folds.
we make incantations of the women whose voices we love.
and chant them
until we fall
asleep
(all this is worship)

مرهم/marham
this time translated as
antidote.

i am good at keeping things intact.
(I grew up with a man in my house
that broke things)
so i try not to make a home of something
that has to be broken into

i am a woman and i never learnt
how to make a first move
i was taught
to write lovespells instead
(by my mother, conjurer)
and i hope that what i write
doesn’t always keep me
unrequited.