aya —

i hope you forgive this silence;

sometimes i forget

absence is a mothertongue

not everyone is native to.

my mother has taught me to be a polyglot

swingroping between ablation & bloom

& still, i remain a tourist to every mirage

in this chimeric pageantry —

perhaps, we should flesh a seance,

invoke siken so that “we’re inconsolable”,

“possessed by light”, an ultraviolet haemorrhage;

unfurl ourselves like your flowers do.

tonight, though, i splice the stalk

i tender myself,

riverbed into the goose-fleshed precursor

to self-anatomisation —

until now, i have only embodied

the phantom limb of want,

intangible; resolute. yet,

for the coming year, i skin myself undeniable.

to answer your query: indubitably,

in the past i have learnt that to be glutted with light is

enough. but the future shall discipline us on replenishment,

on how radiance liquefies, magnifies into each relinquished abyss,

tomorrow, i froth against the ebb of the tide,

spill into every warmth, every kindness,

every reprieve as rhyzomatic,

flung outwards, into the kohl-winged siren calls of a terpsichorean moon,

tell me, what does she whisper to you?

yours,

shazi

for @avolitorial in response to this, as part of the @letterpoems project! Happy New Year🧡!