Halogen
- Halogen
Each time we got displaced from home, we gained electrons.It made up the particles that brought back memories of how we sat
around a dining table, before the first blast that ushered the war. Here, we substituted remedies for miracles.
[Fluorine]We became products of salt when we remembered all that happenedto the table, and the empty chairs that surrounded it.
I imagined our curtains were soaked in organobromides because they repelled the flames from the pictures on the wall.
I isolated my body from her historiesand the nomenclature of the griefs buried within.
[Chlorine]Displacements of oxygen made our lungs a garden of thorns. We know thereshould be light far ahead, but it could also be another fire.
The pool prepared us for survival, but it wasn't enough— it hurts to see my reflection in the blue water.
[Bromine]There was word a new witch was going to be in town.This was supposed to be a small congregation of mourners
as choristers. We imagined that our dead husbands were on a journey to discover new elements that could replace the salt in our jugs.
We all have loss in common. We have a body riddled with holesthat could also be cellar, with empty wine bottles filled with obituaries. [End Page 33]
[Iodine]Today, the sky is blue-black, that's enoughevidence for why the rain had our footprints erased.
On the walls are stories of the girls that were here long before we ran out of vaccines.
In my dreams, a pond of fingerlings turns to crabs anytime there's afull moon. I see my reflection on the wall, I am inches' taller.
I thought the world would be at peace if we all fell asleep at once, so I closed my eyes. When the smoke lost all its feathers, we all became silent.
[Astatine]Ten years after, mustards had grown from the decay of all we left behind.It had our blood in its vines, but it looks dark as elements that are semiconductors.
The broken windows are enough evidence that we once lived in ruins. The classroom is now full of flowers that are metaphors for the isotopes of red.
The leaves grew radiant in our absences,and here we are, learning to walk in our new blouses.
[Undiscovered] [End Page 34]
Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. His poems are featured or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore and elsewhere. He's currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Mississippi.
