by Zebib K.A

I never imagined you, future self
Not the lines on your forehead, not the cellulite (gasp)
of your used born hips.
Nor your wisdoms.
What wisdoms? What sorrows? What secrets unearthed?
Thinking of you now, you emerge with a metallic gleam.
Wrapped in foil.

What lies beyond this dawn (your future dawn)?
I fear empty falling boxes.
I never imagined a graceful marriage bed;
How will my body’s mind sway
into all these tomorrows?

If my future is a siren song
I must shut up my ears!
or else be dashed on the rocks.
The future is robots, bullet trains,
children emerging out of canals,
wrinkled knobby hands.
I have never imagined a day beyond this very point,
but what if I live-
another year, another ten?

What if I am a vampire self
in the coffins of my own making?
What if I am a fallen solider left
in the trenches, unawares,
the steel guns and hills of war
abandoned around me.
I must move forward and risk it all.

Future is you my love.
(What future is there if
there is no future day
I can imagine with you?)
Can I trust you?
In the future, then, can I trust you?
With gentleness and vulnerable anatomy.

I am the doe in the forest dawn,
the tender, ready spirit
in technicolor atmospheres-
The one who stays.

Zebib K. A. | @pegasusunder | medium.com/@pegasusunder.com
Zebib K. A. is a writer, psychiatrist, and movie lover living in NYC. She comes from a black/immigrant background, and identify as queer, and explore these identities in her writing. She has published in The Rumpus, Counterclock Journal, HerStry Blog, Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Re-imagining Gender In Wakanda Anthology, co-published in Cabinet of Heed, and presented at the event ‘Memoir Mondays’, a monthly reading series. She has upcoming pieces being published on Midnight & Indigo and The Selkie.