Homeless

By HUSSAIN AHMED

 

I woke up to a frozen neighborhood. 

I wondered how it ever bloomed 

After it got so white and lonely. 

Where do the birds hide when it snowed?

I have many questions, but I can only ask my reflection

From the mirror, anytime I wash my face 

Before another salaat. 

Each time, this is what it means to be in khalwa.

You whisper names you know Allah bears. 

With each repetition, you asked what names only you want to call God

That no one may know. That’s how we learn to love.

I have a name for everyone I loved that is no more.

Baba didn’t know this garden is never free of weeds.

Where do the homeless sleep when it’s all cold?

They go back to God’s house, it is the only time they are allowed.

On other days, how come their families don’t come for them?

I don’t have answers to his many questions, I sighed instead 

And prayed that God would forever leave His doors open, 

Even when it’s not snowing, even when the grasses are back up.

 

Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian, poet, and environmentalist. He received an MFA in poetry from the University of Mississippi. His poems are featured in AGNI, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He is the author of Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile.

[Purchase Issue 24 here.]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Homeless

Related Posts

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.