The Ether

It’s more than dishes tattered with mandazi scraps and grease, more than craters  bruising the sky like neglected fruit. It’s more than trash gorging itself gradually at the rim, more than pennies gasping for air as they drown into dimes. It’s more than clothes tattered as the hungry mouth forced shut, more than parchment brittle, Read more

Brown feet on brown steps  preserve cadence  carved in woodgrain  resounding echoes  trapping years in space  like spirals inside a trunk or molten wax taking new shape. My father’s feet drag  two beats behind my mother’s and mine.  My brother’s feet clamor  toes cacophonous, a broken wind chime sails and clappers erupting  aggressive against the Read more

I pressed my hands into the earth—the dead grass, brittle, snapping under the weight of my palms.Soot blackened the crescents of my nails,the air thick as something just burned.But soot is only another form of paint.Bareness twists itself open,revealing possibilities stitched into its ribs.Periphery becomes perspective. I’m learning the alchemy of language:how a single word Read more

I am grateful for the road that never changes.How else would I notice the way I unravel—threadbare as a being in motion—if not tethered to a path that rejects permutation? I am grateful for sedimentary rock,its countable layers offering certainty.How else could I soothe thoughtsthat ricochet quietly,like misremembered constellations—or the fading pulse of the cathiding Read more

It begins then, in silence, in bartered brushes of two shoulders equally committed to a pretend game: Pretend not  to feel something tremble awake,   only to hold it still,   unspoken, quiet as breath,   this fragile ache   both of you pretend   not to feel. Pretend not to parse meaning from gazes that linger a beat too Read more

There’s an empire forming around me,Etched in fractured cobblestone and loosely laid bricks–fragile enough that I contemplate the idea of a stronger foundation,compare it to sultans of a victorious age,then consult the textbook monarchs, seeking their silent validation. But tonight, I wonder: is comparison the thief of joy?As the stars vie for attention in a Read more