A woman sits alone in her stanza & prays to the mirror. A jinn falls in love with her figure.
The light is out. Every candle in the house flickers a warning. Her husband is not home.
In love with the woman of everything. She makes love to herself. Requests
an AC unit, 3 cherries for lipstick, and a collection of Iqbal’s. She married a photograph.
Her dark mascara made of the moon’s musket oil. Her eyes impaled by a sculptor’s thumbs.
Saturn’s inflamed rings her scarf, hexed & hulled. She says, “my life will begin
once I am gone.” We return to him in full. All her pleasures withheld by pleasure.
All her nights spent grinding on her own hip. Her purpose to vessel a boy.
“Born without her nose” they pray. However, she is willed
enough to bear her body’s consequences. The way prayer bears our faith.
Nightly on the rooftop, sewing an island of needles to her grief.
She lives in theirs. When I come to see her, I am too late.
The girl with our playlist for when she missed me. Who stayed up late, curled into my legs.
She sleeps with one man tonight. Her dreams growl
at my touch. She hates me. For I made choices.
Withdrawn. Passed as a boy. Long enough to stay employed
& offer my retribution. No one wants to marry me. She is too beautiful.
An unkindness of ravens for hair. Her ghazals of bloodlet. Her mouth a hole desire shot through.
I finger the other side & no blood. Instead, a string of infinite prayer beads.
Not even music could bear to remember us. I am asked to make chai & the pot boils over.
I hand my responsibility to another woman. She resents me & I thank her. How true she looked on her wedding day, I imagine. How quickly innocence fluxes in & out of the white sheet
hung on the clothesline of our rooftop. In the wind, I see alternative outlines of her body.
Curved & queered by the lights of another country.
I love you still.
I miss the kind of woman you were when we could touch.
Diya Abbas is a Pakistani writer from the Midwest. Her poems are featured or forthcoming in Poetry Daily, RHINO, Foglifter, diode, and others. Her instagram is @joyridddle. diyabbas.com.