The bullet holes set like a pair of eyes in my spine, it may be a dream but the man sharpening his blade at it in prophetic motion shoots me a glance of my awareness not having amazed him the slightest, and the other face I am all too familiar with nods me to my seat, I wonder as my back suddenly goes bare, if I should tell of the blood I lost in the shower, or of the leg wound that only just healed from yesterday, instead I contemplate pain, the sting, the possible extraction of metal with metal, I reach my hand to my back to caress the eyes for soothe, and I watch my thoughts float and hang above the tip of his blade, bleeding as they release sparks from being rubbed against stone for far too long.
Take me where fireworks implode
in the lake, the castle’s lights dim back into their bulbs, the place where my tongue has met yours, in compatibility and the metronomic breathing of the grass in the waters the lake can only reflect fire to rise in the cheeks of the opaque walls of a paint-less fort. Let’s meet on this skin, see you through me. The lake surfaces what of the fireworks that remained, the rest float like bottoms of boats, half immersed, having tasted an opiate memory of salt, but the woods of their words know only water, no fire, earth, or promise.
Deplete
so, this is how it begins over the top of tall buildings
poking their tongues at the sky, the climb down is a leap
of faith, every house is blaring a love tune and the chilly starry
sky is keeping all the sleepless away from their fantasies,
the picture is a perfect canvas like a screaming mouth sutured
in a Munch painting; Gogh’s burgundy lampposts burn golden
hues like rings of smoke from a tea vendor’s cigar
complying with boats of shadow passengers going across an ocean
of emptiness in the eyes of this lover whose mate never arrived
to promise, the lines are long on his tongue for crossing
continents of his plea; lock your hand into coincidences,
those that exhausted the passages of covert canals under which they’d meet and desist.
Photo Withheld by request
Bio: Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Over 300 of her poems appear in a variety of literary venues both print and online including several anthologies by different presses. All of her published work can be accessed on her blog sheikha82.wordpress.com. She edits poetry for eFiction India.