Qamar Firdaus Saini
Issue 1: RISE, July 2023
i think about cows and how you don’t eat beef
for non-religious reasons. there is an after-
taste i can’t describe – when our tongues meet
i remember
the twang
of guitar strings,
my shoulder dislocating from the weight
of your head, my anchor, or our combined
importance. everything was of utmost
gravity, i was falling into orbit,
your satellite, or maybe a meteor
streaking
away from its constellation. at the end
you were
ephemeral, like the wetness of the ground
after a summer’s rain.
there is something to be said about how
you went or how, when it rains i still feel
your chin digging into my shoulder.
my arms are a flower un-blooming
into your back.
we are a bud; i am tilling your skin.
we return to the field
we spent our university nights –
the glint of fireflies,
the wetness of your lipstick glistening.
some nights the stars watch me unhook
every lock in your body, unpick these wounds.
i bend your chest open to locate every vault.
i am mining for the nights
we laid at the bridge,
watching other satellites or maybe airplanes
journey across the sky.
except
this time, there is an ocean underneath us.
this is not a metaphor, but a real sea brimming
with fishes you can eat.
except this: gravity
doesn’t anchor the way we are.
this time, the rain. we fall
upwards instead.
Qamar Firdaus Saini is in the public service and is especially fond of Explosions in the Sky. He writes to remember. His recent poems are in Cordite Poetry Review, QLRS, and other anthologies by Singapore-based presses, and in works commissioned by National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum, among others. He was a volunteer organiser for Sing Lit Station’s Manuscript Bootcamp, and is currently a member of ATOM, a writing collective.