the wound is where light enters


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.