Circular

In abated breaths in freshly-packed, measly-charged tin can rides across the city, two lovers held hands, as if they were born that way. I shopped for groceries and produce where an old man selling overpriced tomatoes talked softly into a button phone kept together by a thread so vibrant it robbed the tomatoes of their life. There's a tea store that stays open until 4 AM, but only at the fraying ends of December when winter drapes like a blanket of desire around us. Quietly, lovers gather to smile over the steam of hot tea that makes this life worth living. You can't see it unless you get too close. In the cold, I couldn't make your face out but your hands were warm, and you held me as the light dimmed around the park. We kept walking in circles and finding each other and with each restraining breath I wished there was less between us. How do you cross the ocean for someone? I ask when you tell me, it's as easy as making them breakfast. I think I would make you breakfast every day until we burned up if that brought me any closer to understanding the space you kept as your own, like a graveyard, like a garden. I would wash your feet and hold them in the same circular rhythms that hold this universe in its place—like a prayer. A tin can rides away at night—another prayer. The circular rhythm of the wheels give it meaning as it sinks into the city. In the morning, it'll follow the same route it follows every day, and there will be a melody to celebrate in it when two lovers find themselves holding hands. In abated breaths, in stolen, tender glances—like a prayer, like longing.

Raian Abedin is a poet, a student of Biochemistry, and a contributor at The Daily Star.