August by Sara Elkamel

for Cairo

……

Because I don’t want to indict my memory, I indict August. I accuse it of opening the door to the dream as I dreamed it. I was indifferent to the heat. Hungered for your touch like salt. Sometimes I’d wait hours. Days. August made you restless. You paced around the house, closed as many doors as you could. I have no idea, anymore, what instinct is. Those nights it felt it was not wanting, at all, to leave. And leave to go where? They had moved the trees elsewhere, moved the City of the Dead, built prisons instead of gardens and poisoned the dogs. It wasn’t all bad. Your dad called weekly to ask if you had enough honey, wanted more mangoes. The houseplants were green without water. The cats entertained themselves. I started pacing too, killed time painting blue lines around my eyes. Even learned to sing. You asked me to sing louder, looking straight at me. And you slipped into my hands like water. We built a monument like no other. It was a good city, August. Before you’re here all the fucking time, before I have nowhere else to go, before what happened to the street? Before what street? The way I remember it, I left a pillow of hair on the sheets. I watched as you slept, mouth open, too great a distance from me. I kissed the abscess on the kitten’s lips. I ate the dream for breakfast; left the house a living thing. And yes by that I mean slowly dying.

Sara Elkamel is a poet and journalist living between Cairo and NYC. Currently an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University, Elkamel has had poems appear in The Common, Michigan Quarterly Review, Four Way Review, The Adroit Journal, Memorious, Best New Poets 2020, and other publications.