"Dear Safaa (Fathy),"
I saw the wind reach through
your ears again, and you made a huge
smile in words, flashing through your
teeth. It was the unseasoned hour
of breathing fish and our gills were
choked with massacre, the rain along
the avenues coming out red.
We were getting younger in our palms
turned and curled in through these
mornings or night hours, it was
said so, fleeting and winded, you in
the sun for a second, having
to come out blue, and the verdant
decorations all we could think of
subtly to that mark. Also it was
purple, triangular, gleaming, some
kind of wound held together by
separation. Never to know the end
of it, transitioning back to the
inner thoughts made up of
dominoes and concrete leaves.
Several thousand people had
fit into that square thinking
it was a circle of souls.
The bodies separated out
and we were left with maps and
archives, some branches, and
ancient intuitions. These lines
weave through yours, and the
thinking goes around, far into
where we will be.
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Author Bio: Sarah Riggs is a writer and artist, born in New York where she is now based, after having spent over a decade in Paris. She is the author of seven books of poetry in English: Waterwork (Chax, 2007), Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Reality Street, 2007), 60 Textos (Ugly Duckling, 2010), Autobiography of Envelopes (Burning Deck, 2012), Pomme & Granite (1913 Press, 2015) which won a 1913 poetry prize, Eavesdrop (Chax, 2019) and The Nerve Epistle(forthcoming Roof Books, spring 2020/21). She is the author of the book of essays Word Sightings: Poetry and Visual Media in Stevens, Bishop, & O’Hara (Routledge, 2002), and has translated and co-translated six books of contemporary French poetry into English, including most recently Etel Adnan’s Time (Nightboat, 2019).