Zaynab Bobi
Phases of love or torture?

It takes one night for a wife to recollect her husband's memories from a dusty urn;
how his fist caress her skin,
how he wrote love songs with three lyrics—swat/belt/lust— on her body,
how she fetches bruises from the mirror when she pours herself into it every morning.

he is dead. her husband is dead.
& she shoves him into the wrong body— first phase of torture.

the cloud/the sun/the birds/the room/
witnesses how every night
her body speaks in the same accent /screaming/aching/trembling/sweating/
just as the way he speaks— second phase of torture.

this isn't a poem about a woman doodling her pain into metaphors of pity,
or sharpening her tongue into blade of silence.
this is a poem on how to choose a grave outside her body to bury her husband's love bites— l
ast phase of torture.