30 April, 2020: Fathima Zahra

Essex, UK


I dreamt last night of flying jellyfish and the night before of boats in the air.
 
When I wake for suhoor, I’ve to remind myself to soften my movements, to not wake the neighbours up.
 
We fast & break our fast in the quiet of our house, like clockwork mice put in a doll house, we move in concentric circles.
 
I call my friends and they moan about a shared utopia of ramadan in Jeddah. We never found a masjid that didn’t laser beam my siblings out the taraweeh prayer, crawling, I don’t know of this utopia.
 
This much I miss - waking up to the quiet thuds heard across hallways, the sound of a family stretching awake in the sleepy blues of 4 am, spoons clanking against bowls, our building shares a yawn.
 
Sharing a bus ride with strangers to haram & feeling like I just stepped into the scene where they cast protective charms over Hogwarts, like not even the crows in the air could shit on us.
 
Our days pinwheel into each other, we swap saturday iftars in the masjid for Facetime & a meal in pixels.


Zahra is an Indian poet based in Essex. She is currently studying towards a Biomedical Sciences degree at Queen Mary University of London.
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