NewPoetry

Qurat Dar

I don’t write love poems.
Easier to sing to my suffering.
I am clenched-fist selfish with my tenderness.

But here we are, coaxing the moon down through the sunroof.
Cords of jasmine coiled on the dashboard. Soon to soak in the fridge.
Bleed sweetness into our hair.

Come glow in the car with us. The music is too loud
but asking to turn it down feels like a goodbye. The windshield
an impressionist painting. My eyelids are beginning their slow
shutter home but I don’t want to go to sleep. I want the
split-sky downpour of our laughter, the chorus that bathes
every bitterness from me. I keep losing my voice to our sunset spill.

For so long I am desk-bound and empty.
Everything good minnows silver through my fingers.
We stretch our dreams gauze-thin. Across timezones.
Across the road spikes of a dollar sign.
A thousand schemes for a chance at again, again, again.

But here we are: every mouth softening around my name.
A sugar cube surrendering every edge.
Easy, Qurat. Always gulping like a man
pulled from the desert. I am not beautiful,
but my friends think I am, and that is enough.