they are names but also
flowers but

also people and in one case
an entity

everyone envisions their own version
(the version’s usually a man

usually bearded

usually white)

we are not white now nor did we start this way
but this is where our flowers wilt

*

smell periwinkles and think

this one smells like fatimah

daughter of hibiscus
blooms outside the merchant shop

sat on her father’s lap while he laughed
and recited the newest revelation

a touch on his beard, she
could feel god’s pulse and god could not
be described as everyone thought then

and thinks now

there is no gender
nor beard
nor skin

just god

*

fatimah’s mother is dried lavender

bloomed and dried and bloomed
again a flower takes a new life

shape of a blanket or basket

desert husk flickers
whiff a caravan at sunrise

call out khadija
flavour this story

yes i need to hear cave hira’s echoes
from your mouth

her husband shakes in her arms she rocks
him into prophethood

takes the rainfall when she goes

Manahil Bandukwala is a Pakistani writer and artist based in Mississauga. She has two solo chapbooks, Paper Doll (Anstruther Press, 2019) and Pipe Rose (battleaxe press, 2018), and two collaborative chapbooks, Sprawl (Collusion Books, 2020) with Conyer Clayton, and Towers (Collusion Books, 2021) with VII. In 2019, she won Room Magazine’s Emerging Writer Award and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.

Image by Romain MATHON @rmathon