Let us leave
narcotic nights behind us,
let us then meet at the newspaper kiosk
at the edge of the city
while dawn draws upon us.

Dawn is still far away,
beyond the wire-meshed fence
in another country,
another world.
My teeth chatter,
even as you drape your arms around me.

Let us drink tea from mud-cups
that smell of faraway villages,
with houses built on bamboo stilts,
let us shuffle the newspapers,
the ink not yet dried on human lives,
and black all knowing eyes behind veils.

As dawn breaks over stubby minarets,
let us roll the mud-cups on moist earth,
far away from life.

Photograph Courtesy: Sharbeen Sarash © All Rights Reserved