How would we know the difference in the flight of dragon-flies?
Could you tell the stellar of the un-said, bursting
Into a million fragments.
Snow-fall is a ridiculous assessment of love,
It is actually permitted to park here.
When the lonesome moon lights the dark alleyway, as usual
On a non-day,
Can you tell the flight of fireflies?
Glistening like the arabesque longing of the un-spoken
Why don’t you question the frequencies of night-fall,
Notice the delineation of somewhat strange and becoming music
Like the telling of a far-away land, that approaches you
With the flight-fall of aeroplanes…
The call of winter is an absence that can be felt
Only in the invisible hour –
Summer is ripe and her fruits are everywhere.
The flowers on the road reminiscent of summer rain
Glisten as pedestrian woes.
I think of old friends now as someone would of old tears.
The familiarity is strange method,
Like that of old streets one knows at the back of one’s hands
And yet like to a long gone immigrant, is indecipherable at the same time.
When can we lift the curse, on what sacred siren, who can tell?
We must wander ambiguously on bewildering roads
Trying once again to find a thread, one may sail out a boat on…
You know when I used to be in séance with the blackest crows
They would glisten in response to my secretive glances –
Now the god of it has left my reaches and the black depth
Of deep seas, is as it was to a jelly-fish.
I can’t know water from indifference because
The wonder of it is myth-cured.
To resemble a waking man after glimpsing eternal shadow
Is monsoon-driven, driving out ghosts.
The morning is brightly benevolent
But the enigma is gone.
What replaces it, is the slow coming of new skin.
Much later, you start to enjoy the masquerade.
After all, you’ve been re-born.
Bio: Fatima Ijaz is currently teaching English and Speech Communication at IBA, Karachi. She is an English graduate from Hartwick College, N.Y and York University, TO. She also holds a Master in English Linguistics from Eastern Michigan University. She won first prize at the Mclaughlin Poetry Contest in Toronto, 2007. Her work was featured in poetry and art collaboration for #NomeansNo at the Music Mela, Islamabad’18 and at Art Baithak, KU in March’19. Her work has been published in The Pandemonium Journal, The Write Launch, Rigorous, Abramelin, Zau, Whirlwind, Praxis, and others.