After the Birds Have Flown

After the Birds Have Flown

By: Husam (Sam) Salman

In the first line of the final text,
Too many things were wanting to be said at once,
My mind once again beheld your naked, faceless love,

Seized and wounded: why paw at me further
Hasn’t your absence been satisfying you,
For you to be, on your terms with your half wit?

In the first line of the final text,

Too many things were wanting to be said at once,
My hand composed only a quivering dance in the air.

He seized my mind and crippled growth with disregard;
I stood shivering, with shaking limbs and weak knees, 
Then leaped into the river….

In the first line of the final text,

Too many things wanted to be said at once,

I regained faculty of my hands

Composed to him like no story before,

Of impersonal gestures? of a kissing coupled strangers?
Of forgetting me from the world?

(He was already closed to too many things.)

In the first line of the final text,

Too many things wanted to be said at once,

So I drew him near to me.
Brought him to kneel at my heart

The ruddy setting evening light, I imagined,
was casting its glow upon his brow,

Would catch the glisten in his eye, as he read

These words and would at last know

“I will hold your feather forever –

Just like the love I have for you.”