the garden
by Ibrahim Nadeem
the garden
our necks fold over red,
lizard-like
squinting at the sun,
the blades of our squeezed shoulders
fat and taut and high,
thoughtful strung arrows
buried into each other
like kids sharing secrets.
we tend to the dying baby’s breath,
snip between the tight fisted white wisps,
snake out the wet mildew with a finger
as guilty as a Sunday is long.
rot makes home like a home furnishes rot,
rot chameleon
against the wet mildew walls the painter left before quarantine, inside
rot chameleon rot chameleon
in the whites of our hair and the quiet ellipses and
the silent furrowed red raven way mom’s eyes look at me when i say today isn’t a good day.
the burnt wedding portrait we still hang up in all its brassy soot covered four foot tall glory,
the young man that looks like me and,
the silent gaze,
the audience, the empty exterior,
the little studio props in it probably furnishing little houses with little families across sindh.
the rot is chameleon.
mom’s tea goes cold on the ceramic porch and a single thin winged fly sprawls its limbs out wide
sinewy like a petal,
inside it summertime,
olympic pool of chai.
carcass.
my eyes shot blind by the blunt staring sun,
everything peach cast
the grating crow
the three people i call home and their shadows, long
everyone two toned for two blinding minutes,
with muddied fingers hanging low
like unholstered guns
swinging
making halos in the air,
the wisteria sings around them so tall
we garden in the pandemic
we fish out the rot
the rot
the rot.