Have I Given You A Season?

Dedicated to: Aseel Kawash

Have I ever mentioned
The hot chocolate you invented?
Thick and a little sugary
Poured into the wrong cups
By the scatter of our weekly magazines

Have I ever told you
I’ve forgotten the orange-redness
Of my hair when I was younger?
I wish I’d chosen dye more wisely
Yet your drawings of me
Of the smile I attempted horribly
And the fiery, red curls
Made me feel less foolish

I always believed time would cease
At the blissful age of sixteen

Your eyes were the ones singing
And the dark lashes cast a shadow
Against the peak of your cheeks.
Your longing, I thought,
sufficed in the place of Kohl
And pretty accessories.

Your neck bent from the weight
Of a hundred ridiculous thoughts,
You loved and loathed the inner commotion
Within your head; a tilted crown that held
Streams of slightly stiffened black hair
Like an untended garden

I seldom hear of a sad love
That cut women’s faces
Into more beautiful pictures

I also hear the sound of your heart sometimes
As it creases, hardens and creases again,
And finally plops into a field of sunflowers.

Have I given you a season?
For no particular reason?

You are neither summer nor winter
You are the soft, broken silence
That tiptoes before mornings of early spring

And it all makes it a curious find
To note down that some nightmares
Taste of sweet, dying men of snow
And cream-purple flowers
That pretend to be eager to grow.