For the Sonorous
My Anonymous Voice
Words drown in their inkwell
Like my voice breathes the silence
A fountain pen, drops, bleeding
No solace in a blank page
The road narrows down to a tulip
Pollen stains pricking the dead
Days leak out into the floor of time
No roof to hold out, only a gurgling drain
Sunshine’s in the mincer
I rub the glassy eye
Green’s the color of the bog
Orange is for the beads
One marble, two marbles, three marbles
Blue is for the eyes that are not glass
Teapot steam fogs my brain
Dagger-toothed smiles haunt my sleep
Let’s not spread the ash of roses
Those that fasted, wilting in the rain
Prostituting verisimilitudes Latitudes,
False, frolicking
Train ticket, here I come
My towed goodbyes abandoned in the backyard
Anonymous in an anonymous train
I shall not, so remain, not for long
You, yes you in the seat beside me
Look at me, I command you
I’m not an echo in a mirror
My inkwell will never drain
Riham Adly is a creative writing instructor and an emerging writer from Egypt with several short stories published in online lit magazines and a lonely, but exciting article about scarabs in ancient Egypt. She's not someone who lets rejections discourage her, the more the merrier. Riham currently hosts her own book club “Rose’s Cairo book club” in Egypt- a place that has no reading culture- to provide refuge for those few –but existing- bibliophiles.
