Poetry: I cannot touch the canvas

By Aya Al-Telmissany

I cannot touch the canvas

lest it infect me with the secrets

it breeds within its weaves.

The canvas is threading 

my lips a color like

a soothing stoic cloud

rising between the grief

and the muse.

The thread is but a silent

unending sea and my lips

falter without a splash.

Only I can hear the splash 

of tickling words enclosing

time into a lost velvet perfume

I spray myself with time

but the fragrance escapes me

as eagerly as it does the bottle

so I tell myself, perhaps time 

is better off tucked 

away between the pages

of my books,

or perhaps better off 

when I spit it out 

on the canvas.

You see, my lips 

have been dripping

with time ever since I drank 

eternity

from yours.

***

Aya is a poet, translator, and scholar. She has a Master’s degree in English and comparative literature, with a focus on women’s poetry, from the American University in Cairo. She is now pursuing a second Master’s in Interdisciplinary Middle-East Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She writes poetry in English and French and has been published by Anomalous Press, Poésie en Liberté, and Haus Für Poesie. She also won the Madalyn Lamont Literary Award in 2018 and 2022.