Poetry

Knot

by Madina Tuhbatullina

I am the kind above the plaster churches.
We happen to share this sentence.

I pretend every sound is a letter,
cluster your freckles and thread the lines
in your iris, the delicate brown sunrise.

Someone is lifting a fallen man in your world.
Not me, lavish and frivolous. I keep the vigor
for another cleansing birth: a couplet, a triplet.

I’ve already hung the bicycles I can’t ride.
My hope is 

my hope is — 

— mirror 

also. My hope is — 

a spoon is also a mirror. 

The hair above the lip bends to breath like the nostril.
With all the lines, without meeting criteria.

Appeared in Issue Spring '25