Night

I want to meet

night as a friend

who welcomes and comforts

offers solace and replenishment.

I want night to

become a place

I seek

to deliver, to surrender, to belong.

The night is not my friend.

It is not only an end

to my day

but an entry

into a falling space

that refuses to

contain me.

The night pushes me

into spirals of

unending darkness.

I travel eternity

in this falling

from within myself.

Moment by moment

the sweetness of my

body

turns into a

body of alienation

and I am far from

the dream

I dreamed all these years.

The dream has lost me.

I am sure it is looking

to roam inside my body again

for I gave it the

warmth of my breath

the waters of my desire

the wisdom of my soul

the gentleness of my heart.

The dream too is alienated

quivering at the edge of

my existence, my being.

The dream is

dying

without the home

of my soul-body.

My dream is homeless.

I want to call my dream

back into my body

to renew it

to nurse it back to

the way

God made it

pristine

dripping of honey and the scent of summer

fluid and dancing

to its own bliss

joyful in its singularity

made holy

by the dream.

About the Author

Tahseen Béa

Tahseen Basheer is a creative writer and a scholar. Her short stories have been published in Your Impossible Voice, The Penman Review, The Write Launch, The Adirondack Review, and the Scarlet Leaf Review. A new story is forthcoming in The Brown Orient. Her recent publications include a scholarly book, Engaging Body and Soul: Cultivating Feminine Wisdom with Atropos. She has also published poetry and creative non-fiction in the journal International Studies in Philosophy. She has a PhD in American Modern Poetry, and Feminist Theory.