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By Tarfia Faizullah

I saw then the white-eyed man
leaning in to see if I was ready


yet to go where he has been waiting
to take me. I saw then the gnawing


sounds my faith has been making
and I saw too that the shape it sings


in is the color of cast-iron mountains
I drove so long to find I forgot I had


been looking for them, for the you
I once knew and the you that was born


waiting for me to find you. I have been
twisting and turning across these lifetimes


where forgetting me is what you do
so you don’t have to look at yourself. I saw


that I would drown in a creek carved out
of a field our incarnations forged the first path


through to those mountains. I invited you to stroll
with me there again for the first time, to pause


and sprawl in the grass while I read to you
the poem you hadn’t known you’d been waiting


to hear. I read until you finally slept
and all your jagged syntaxes softened into rest.


You’re always driving so far from me towards
the me I worry, without you, is eternity. I lay there,


awake, keeping watch while you snored.
I waited, as I always seem to, for you


to wake up and come back to me.


  • Arts & Sciences
  • Living
  • Nature

Poet Bio

Tarfia Faizullah
Bangladeshi American poet Tarfia Faizullah grew up in Midland, Texas. She currently lives in Detroit where she teaches at the University of Michigan and is an editor for the Asian American Literary Review and Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. See More By This Poet

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