Commended: Ashbah Rehman, Kafir

Ashbah Rehman

Commended - 2025 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Roots'

Kafir

Universe; God

Grail; Lustrate

Veil; be Chaste

Prostrate; Submit

open Writ; Iqra

Father; Mother

Sister; Brother

Suffocate another

Perhaps I will be the first to

; Break

You never fell for the snarl of thorns forced upon your head.

Seemed it was worthless to you, losing sleep and blood over the old leather-bound adage.

Cut away from soaked cloth and flipping Pentagons for thrill,

I admired you from afar, white emulsion door two rows down the peeling estate,

Rapt as ever.

I never meant to get close to You, to hold you close to me, closer than God, than my jugular vein.

To axe and break off, theatrical and ceremonial

Sleaze, affront, lashed and reeling, a backdoor held open with a beer keg.

Slick, wet, throats on fire,

a funeral pyre in a Hell-hot Catherine wheel -

I had no idea it could be this way.

That night, something shifted within me, yet I felt the capacity to had been there a while.

In closing the writ and opening the wound, the forked tongue path of You came clear into view.

Lying breathless beneath a decrescent Moon, And a single stagnant wishless Star

Stay me, Pray You, I could’ve stayed this way forever.

Yet, my Mother; my Father

my Sister; my Brother

my God, O God;

The Illusion of Free Choice.

Revert;