Wanderer

: ^ traveller has no plans and is not intent on arriving"

I talk about you the way my city speaks of monsoons:

the sky turns a dusty pink :he winds gather into a storm and the streets let out a sigh, waiting for how hard the rain will fall

the way it will heal their split skin collect in crevices and sit heavy on the soft petals of my grandmothers roses.

every afternoon I watch from inside my childhood home, marvel at the rain

how it takes away all of the hazeleaves me a new city.

m the quiet 1 am a child again I dance beneath the stars

no shoes or broken smiles

less dusty and so light.

at night I can hear the winds inside of you soon you will let out a sigh there is so much of the world to be seen you might take off for a while and leave me to gather dust

after all, you are a wanderer I have known it all along --

1 have begun to hoard the silences between your thundering downpour •eating all of the things you leave me with every time you gather around me. unable to confine ourselves to one home both of us will roam and roam

and roam through this earth

"J - impasses point us toward the next monsoon season * here the sky will turn a dusty pink •ere, we will walk the city's streets allcallused

and split and so full

• -n the afternoon breaks into rain -•'"fenceswill unravel

^7 w they may be)

let our,, ones spill

- Zainab Syed -