AYESHA ASAD

Portrait of My Sequestering

Here, brother: I hid all evidence.
I folded myself inside nightclothes,
retreated to the bed. I ate mildly,
as I should. I watched the moon outside
and it blinked back. I walked parallel
like an airfield, lined up behind you
as the atmosphere purpled, cut challah
with the same knife. I listened as you
whistled the same way, teeth poised
to let tongue curl, lark-like, feigned,
extraordinary. I limbered into
what shape graced the air: arrow, paradigm,
inmate, operandum. Here: I left my
eclipse where I used to sing, gouged
my voice where it soured, nodded
where I meant to shake. Months piled up
like rainwater – I put myself on hold.
I circled your bidding and dove
like a hawk, holding my flight
above the last orchestra of wind.
I searched myself over and over
for the keys that slid out of my stomach,
catching them with a practiced hand.
My lips I welded. My throat I devoured. And
I blanketed the scene: music creeping on my back
like the winter cold. Music I shrugged off and let
fall: two steps out my window, one step
onto dark lawn. And the grass woke up
like it did every morning.

The Ocean Calls Wherever I Go

I do not know how to tell you
that I am tired. Tired of wishing myself

into those summers, biking on asphalt
and landing face-first onto a concrete

web. My cheek blistering, rubbed red
and purple, raspberry threading

outside each vein. I crumpled into the heavy
stone, and you hurtled over, dabbed

my swollen skin with alcohol,
told me it would sting.

I swallowed the whistles
that swept past my gapped

teeth, felt my wound ignite: a burn
that crescendoed, then fell apart

in surrender. Forget how clumsy it looked:
I was a dancer that day. I swam in circles

underneath your palms. I looked to you
for my first music. You were something

I had never considered: a capybara, trapped
in yellow suburban grass, or a dolphin, beached

near the coastline, blinking
away the tides that foam near the mouth

of land and pull away
with a thrust. You, or what I remember

of you, or what scissions I think
we might be seeping under,

like a drowning man that gasps, convulsing
underwater, his hand stretched out,

empty from thumb to pinky.

Winter Remedy

Winter is best spent sequestered. These days,
I let my mouth waterfall behind a dam, let my tongue

rain magnolia, let my mind re-wander,
slowly, like a drop of water

sliding down a glass. I have no way of telling my mother
that I thirst. That when I lie down at night,

I slip into an otherworld, and my river
relights. That in that world my heart

did not break. In there, I did not unravel
when my teachers clawed out parts of me

they did not think existed. In there, my rabbit bones
wrote themselves over in ink until they steamed

and my father was there one night, telling me
he loved to see me flower

and my tongue ascended
into viridescence and I told him

I hoped that when you watched the moon,
you looked at a crater

honeycombed with love.
In myself I see a germination. A rabid fastening,

a ballet filled with you
and your childhood and what you learned

and unlearned. How I wish we relearned,
snatched a moment to relive

without the pressure of my throat
expanding like a firework and rupturing

the calm of what little lake
lay reblooming between us.

Aurora

Even now, I think in your absence. The house
                    uncorks, air reeking of what I did not tell you.

You must be in your car, perhaps – warm,
                    or lustered under a new porchlight,

body wide open, language unfurled. A pose
                     I have trouble replicating. If only I shed

my reptilian skin – released my lodestars
                     cupped captive between my palms, loosened my

wristlet of oversight
                     instead of waiting for my diaphragm

to unglove itself, for my gullet
                     to rewind to past springs,

with their roguish craftsmanship
                     & coolheaded jaunts across the yard,

I wonder where we would have been.
                      In the midst of which aurora.

When you drive back again,
                      come see our new doorknob,

shiny black against the auburn door. Come see how
                      the house breathes. See how I try to unlock

the door, let your river in
                      before my thirst swallows me whole.

Ayesha Asad is from Dallas, Texas. Her work has been included in the 2020 Best of the Net Anthology, and her writing appears or is forthcoming in PANK, diode poetry journal, DIAGRAM, Sundog Lit, Cosmonauts Avenue, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere. She has been recognized by Best of the Net, Creative Writing Ink Journal, and the Robert Bone Memorial Creative Writing Prize. Currently, she studies Literature and Biology at the University of Texas at Dallas. In her free time, she likes to dream.