Yasmina Hashemi
Anchored
I did not fall.
I was lowered
into winter,
where names echo
before they are claimed.
I learned the language of the dark
by licking its walls.
I learned: She does not answer
when you scream Her name.
I learned how devotion sounds
when its mouth is gagged.
At the bottom, there was no punishment,
only the smoke of stillness.
Only the decision
to stop calling upward.
The light did not arrive.
I found it.
A flame held tight enough
to breathe with.
I released the ancestral mirage.
I stripped the flames from Her whirling skirt.
I let longing harden
into a fetish.
I do not ask for signs.
On this longest night,
darkness reaches my womb,
a curse shaped like water.
I look through a hole
the length of two fingers
and see outside the ark:
Waves wash over
centuries of names,
a harem of ancient, exquisite lies.
I release what was sworn
without my consent.
I learn by touch:
there is truth
in this disorder.
What lingers
is what I carry.
I keep watch.
I keep the flame.