EPISTEMOLOGY OF TOUCH
This life: a sleep
that only holds one dream. Our atoms
someday dashed and divided into
bloom. Through this secret: death
is lonely, so it is endless. Ask of me
how you didn’t know how long
I had been fasting.
Could we ever resurface
in an event horizon before
oblivion? Leafy light
cradling the last birdcall.
Shifting night to morning to hold
your shoulders. Was there ever an Atlas
on the table where I put bills? Only birds
when we got to the mountaintop to receive
the message. Eventide pulled in all smoke
from the city. In synapses of words themselves
returning from a black hole, the latest dream.
It was so cold we slept like The Lovers
wrapped in a whiter shade of pale our faces
barely touching. Remember
tides do not rip at the seam. Turning
on and on. To face the faces you have let
down. So rolling stones join bluedark buzz of moss.
About the Author: Jai Hamid Bashir is a Pakistani-American and second-generation artist. She is an MFA candidate at Columbia University where she was awarded the Linda Corrente Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Palette Poetry, The Margins | Asian American Writer’s Workshop, Sierra Magazine, Poets.org, and others.
Image Credit: Joos Van Cleve detail from Portrait of Joris Jacobs Vezelaer (1518) Public Domain
As It Ought To Be 
