Fatema Aftab Miah

If you’d let me,
I’d like to tell you a secret.

Sometimes
when the sunset burns the right kind of yellow or
when the Earth shudders
before it takes its next breath,
I go in search of where time is weakest
and pull at its threads.
I tug at its golden strands and awaken
curled in my mothers lap
as I pretend
to be asleep
as my father pretends
to drink his tea
as my sister pretends
to be an only child.

Please
Look here, now

My seven year old self
is standing on her toes
waiting for a kiss.
She does not know that
it will be the last of its kind.
She does not know it yet,
but I do.

Come closer.
Quickly, now.

It is still summer
it is the center of the poem, you see?
the center of the Sun.
It is still summer here
and it always was.

image credit: Three Sisters by the Beach – Joaquin Sorolla (1908)