“Adult”
by Fatima Jafar
after Rhiannon McGavin
M brings home a thin
gold bottle of perfume
after work: Spring in the Park. Sun
bottled, the room
flowers. Bursts
fecund and green
with our late-night talk.
Speak a daisy, a tree.
Can I sleep here? I ask for the
second thorny night in a
row. We flutter, are busied
in the daytime.
Boil rice, slice the
mail, attend the blue
screen’s ceremony of pixels.
Grill fish in the oven.
I think of my nose,
biggest nostalgic of the
body. I remember bleach
on childhood’s wet floor,
toothpaste at sunrise
and the grey ash
of winter. White
jasmine as it sighed
on my mother’s neck.
Whole decades were
elided, now float by
like nothing, bottled.
Then, it was always
summer— when the fruit
crunched easy under-
foot, and there were still
so many days.
Fatima Jafar is a Pakistani poet living in Boston, where she is an MFA Poetry candidate at Emerson College. She is a Poetry Reader for Muzzle Magazine and Redivider, and is the co-creator of the South Asian literary platform DHOOP Journal (www.dhoopjournal.com). Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in The Shore, Anti-Heroin Chic Mag, The Pinch and more. You can find her on Twitter at @rafajf2112.
