Closet I and II by Sahar Romani

Closet I

For better or worse, I welcomed the misreading –

two women holding hands at a bus stop 

in this part of the world couldn’t be more

than friends, yet somehow I found the city’s narrow lanes 

generous, as I walked through knots of crowds 

with a woman past a ballad of crows 

in a season of water, beneath clotheslines pinned 

with cotton bras, purple petticoats, suspended 

across the sky’s small face before it grew  

with rain, my hands learned to circle her elbow

beyond the front door, below a street

lamp, in the vinyl seat of a cab trapped 

in traffic, far from any hurry 

to get somewhere or give myself a name.

Closet II

The year we were outside a sensible order 

of things, we knew we wouldn’t last.

We slept on a rental mattress,

ate cornflakes in blue bowls on loan. 

We were happy. Nothing was ours. 

Not the collection of Tagore on the shelf 

above the suitcase, nor the photograph – 

a man with a moustache, his brown face pressed

into the left cheek of a woman

in a yellow sari, her eyes pinched

from the sun. Behind them, a blurred taxi.

What must it be like to be lovers who stand out

on the curb of a street. And then years later 

find themselves, still young, nailed to a wall.

Sahar Romani is a poet and educator. Her recent work appears in The Yale Review, The Believer, Guernica and elsewhere. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Poets House, and New York University, where she earned an MFA and teaches first-year writing.

6 September 2021