Image credit: Maheen Haider

with Fall and think of

the eternal future. The whole of it

a hole surrounding

this landfill of memory. The whole of it

breeding itself to breath.

Get up! Say the birds – no it is my

mother chirping, her voice

alkaline as sleepy memory. Her

chest alive with lungfuls

of air, lungfuls of life. She

will outpace Fall.

Here is my pulse, I tell Fall.

Fall shrugs, I do not care for rhythm.

My mother chirps from above: you can

not make friends of dying things. Company

of three, we sit in the space between

my heart’s beats.

Doors stutter when wind greets it.

I close when my mother breathes in.

Fall coils on the hinges of this picture. The

space between like a landscape unclean where

dying things of rust and pulse crawl

across the seams.

An open mind is a wound so I

close mine with stitches of wool. There is

grief in the day, and Fall’s

leaves crumble like metaphors. My mother

steps hard on them; relish. I follow

her footsteps and ignore what’s broken.

We smile the same, Fall and I. My mother

doesn’t understand why. You can not

make friends of dying things. She lays in her wooden

bed. I am pulsing, a battery cracked open

daring touch from a careless hand. She is

rust and her whispers stir God out of his card game.

I tell Fall goodbye. You must leave.

It is my mother asking.

She is agony. She is ash. Fall turns to wave once.

I am with her at daybreak, watching Spring

appear in the night like

cold milk spilling. The birds are chirping.

We are not dying things I say.

She laughs like the splatter of puddles. Do you

ever think of the eternal future? I ask. She says

Now tell me what you’ve got on your mind.

I say I can see the eternal future.

Here in Spring I see it opening.

Author Bio: Maheen Haider was born in Hong Kong and is currently studying social sciences at an undergraduate level. When not attending a lecture, she can be found either on the cricket pitch or in the library stacks. She enjoys discovering quiet spots in Hong Kong, talking about Persian rugs and reading both good and bad fiction.