"when i said i was a time traveller, i meant / i have seen my future with you", Qamar Firdaus Saini
when i said i was a time traveller, i meant
i have seen my future with you
consider the moon’s rotation
around earth, or its phases.
how it returns to the beginning.
this is not a poem about night
but of us watching the sky again.
a university's rooftop, a bridge
between a mall and the mrt,
a park bench in tasmania
on a hill overlooking the sea.
we dream in tidal waves.
our phones commune in close
proximity. your fingers appear
in every poem that was
and is to come: the setting sun,
a mother's funeral, how we went
to ikea for coffee and meatballs
and return with flatpack furniture.
what can i say about building
a home that is not covered in
instruction manuals everywhere?
handle with care, assembly
required. 'we' is a construct
hurtling towards our future.
in this low-light rendering of us,
we deconstruct the night
into constituents: mat, blanket,
slow meadow, constellations.
quiet. we only have forever.