"I Breathe the Morning Alone"

Abdelhady shalaan

From the belly of the sleeping sun beneath the sea, I am endowed with six hundred wings. His grandeur fills the space between heaven and earth. Between the lobe of his ear and his shoulder is a thousand years' flight.

His claws cleave the skin of the sea, a fissure extending from the sun to the shore. He chirps at me with the taste of the sea's purity, hovering above my head.

I spread my arms, adhering to the flutter of his extended wings upon the sands. I fly from the start of the shore to its end.

I forget - as if it never was - my heartache, my bloody sputum, and I leave no traces on the sand.

The sun is revealed, shedding its clothes of "red, orange, yellow".

With the softness of his feet, he stands above my head facing the lime houses. I feel his tension from the sound of the alarms.

He folds his wings in silent stillness, and the shadows of his wings on the sand are two planks on my shoulders. He keeps a single hair from my scalp and flies away.

He faces me with his chest, his back to the sun, spreading his six hundred wings.

The world stops for a moment like a photograph. He emerges to the belly of the sun, and my arms are outstretched like a dead mare's shadow.

beneath beneath the sea wings flight skin of the sea earth heaven sands sun chest shadow Abdul Hadi Shaalan