POETRY: SALMA SAADI

UNPRECEDENTED

Tuesday:  Rediscovering a mangled
manuscript, a first draft of who
we wanted to be. You skimmed
it like you remembered;
We have time now I wanted to say
 
We read what we could, slanted patterns of youthful
cursive:  shopping malls swelling into seed libraries
bullet trains with bright red seats
workdays like hibernating hummingbirds
fucking for more than three minutes without falling asleep
 
When you spoke of home,
it was sliced whispers from an orca
who sang you to sleep
Who are we again?  you asked, a drumfire
revolted twenty kilometres away
 
Remembering Spanish protesters imitating
our hearts, I want to be forgotten we read
 
You lay down and I did too
I read you every word until you
recognized us, Untitled melted dry on the first page
 
And the world spun into the unprecedented
as we constituted our antidote to the rising  

Salma Saadi is a social worker and a writer. She has been published in Untethered Magazine, Sewer Lid, and Plenitude Magazine. In 2019, she participated in Writer’s Studio, a writing residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity.