Necessity
I wear your perfume on my skin
Don’t be unkind
Like wild flowers shy under the sun
Don’t seek the truth,
I tell you none exists
Everything has an expiration date
Love, life, identity, even abnormality.
We are travelers,
Some of us just leave the suitcase at home
So that our hands won’t suffer the weight of our guilt.
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New England
Children are playing next to the ocean coast
and sand castles are built with their digging
hands symphonized with their joyous laughter.
Near the beach, sea rocks are thirsty to move
from sitting next to the New England attic rooms.
The air is cooling down and the little kids
are now nesting on the rocks, trying to get away
from the cool summer breeze, chilled afternoon winds
and the dancing waves.
My little girl is one of the children, and with dreamy eyes
she is pretending to be waving at the Beluga Whales,
the wave makers of the sea … from coast to coast.
The beach and the people are getting ready for
today’s close-up and I hear my voice: “Dokhtaram, Bia!”
We have to say goodbye to the sea and the whales.
Her little body fully clothed floats across
the air, arms in the hands of her father
and after two more rotations, is satisfied to close
her wings for the evening ride.
She slips the shelves and shadows of
her new found friends within the
walls of her night’s dream before
another summer-morning lights the start of the day
for her to watch the length of her footsteps
on the sands next to the white waters and dancing waves.
*Dokhtaram, Bia: in Persian it means, “Come my girl”
–by Sheema Kalbasi
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Sheema Kalbasi is a human right activist, an award winning poet, and literary translator.
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