Have I Given You A Season?

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

Yet here you are
All grown up and pristine,
You had begun to fall
Or so you thought
Into the sleepless songs
of ‘Does he or Does he not’

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.