The sufis say to go to the water
But there I find my best friend at the bottom of the river.
In my dreams I keep circling the same path
and I am the teacher as I am lost.
How woefully inadequate our words are. A photo never
does you justice
And language bridges, but collapses under tension. There
is so much I wish I’d told you. This mind is a
ship of Theseus, neither same nor different,
but one with the water. I await the day
I am but parts you never touched with
equal sorrow and grace, because that day I
will be you, and you will be the water. Today
I went to the lakefront at sunrise, but the beach and
sky were empty, and my dear friend
was not there.
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Sara M. Abdulla is a Palestinian American writer and graduate researcher at Northwestern University. She likes science, art, and philosophy, and is inspired by the surreal. In her free time, she likes to read, take long walks, and seek the silver linings.
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Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals, The Sounding Machine, and three chapbooks. Her writing and visual work have appeared in Blackbird, The Denver Quarterly, Gulf Stream, Waxwing, Analog Forever, Lomography, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal and Diode Editions and is director of liberal arts & sciences at VCUarts Qatar.
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