Do You Like It Here?

Zainab Hussaini

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This place, it sucks the life out of your feet, leaves you crawling up a wall, in search of nothing
Do you like it here?
Here, where monsoon comes at night and everything shatters in the day, when you arrive with a locust in hand, astir like the sun in summer
Ghosts they say are a prettier version of ourselves, devoid of the earth we carry. You remind me of a ghost, carrying air on your shoulders, full of earth’s children; a Lunaria
You’re a storm from the east, you come when the birds wake with water in your reins and a promise of new life
There’s little to like here, the sand slips between your fingers, the air stings your eye, there are spikes in the ground when you walk, the sky seems to be falling upon you
There’s more to like here, when you breathe life into existence, the ghosts find you with a smile, when the day caresses your cheek and you in turn hold me in an embrace.