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Nur Turkmani
Years Ago
Your grandmother’s rooftop pool.
Soda cans sweating like thighs.
Everywhere we looked,
another rubber tree rambling.
Where were we?
Motherhood, yes, if it was for us.
The August stink hovered like flies.
I watched you swim and wondered
if we’d be dancers someday.
At night you dipped a brush into watercolours
to attempt a bougainvillea:
fuchsia and flowering like gowns.
Then, a lemon.
Then a basket of lemons with perfect little leaves.
Oh what a long summer. What happy girls.
Today I threw out my lemons, mould-green,
and all afternoon I sat silent. I thought of us.
How we’re not dancers, or mothers,
or underwater. Yes we’ve come out for air,
and the sky is yellow as a decade.