for Krysia Jopek and Laura M. Kaminski (Halima Ayuba)
Words have become stubborn
refusing to flow any other way;
trees have wired down to twigs
like bones struck by dark spirits.
The shelves on walls are coming
loose; she is inverting and wilting
like a moss-eroding clay statue.
There is a fountain on rich ground
swinging like a pendulum, stops
and changes swirl the way solstice
sings its hues before drowning
into eclipse. The field of despair
is purple like the field of light;
her parts come loose like hinges
on doors. Something inside snaps
and disconnects, and just like that
she is over the pain. Before the hand
detached, falling to earth - the light
of the stone, the incandescent dark,
the healing of lavender - coming into
origin, she sang in mute, of voice
unknown to words; the stubborn
sludge of despair came - the hand
of invoking - like a trapped torrent,
like birds of prey. The ground under
her feet shattered and wings flapped
in her face as buried fears. She cast
her head to the stars billowing light
like auric rings encompassing her
being. She gathered and built until
the hand was whole; her melodies
renewed, and the path a glimmer
of constellations - hived domains -
unending spiral, and the rise eternal.
First published in Nadwah