In the absence of a light source

Illustration: Fatima Jahan Ena

Grief is a lonely river

Like a fisherman's song with an empty net

Like a father walking home with empty hands

Like a mother's existence

Moonlight under a bamboo forest

Birdsong or a death poem

Today, I am an unwritten song

A longing, a daydream, a hope

Tomorrow, I will be the dust

You were birthed from

When the sun reflects off the floor tile

There is warmth to be found at the base

Lean on the sink, it's fragile, but it's there 

Tie together all the broken fragments piece by piece

Cover your skin with patchwork and paint

Quilted heliotrope– face the sun–  

Tilted posture and wilted spine

Fat and slow cumulonimbus clouds

Gaze at you from a distance– moving

So inconspicuously, it's hard to see outside when

You're so up close to the vanishing points of your vertices

A-three-point perspective of all the lives

You have dreamed of living but instead found yourself

Sprawled down on the bathroom floor on a warm Thursday evening

I promise you this

When you stop clawing your eyes out

You will find what you are looking for

Even when and, alliteration for emphasis, 

Especially when

The sun above your head is unkind

You will start to see

Beyond the absence of it

In the absence of a light source

With our sticks and rocks

We will build a make-shift version of it

That works just finely enough

For us to wait out the storm outside