The fog comes on little cat feet.
Soft
as a held breath, it curls
around the ankles
of trees, lingers at doorways
like
a secret it’s not ready to tell.
Streetlights blur into halos,
each one a quiet confession.
Windows glow,
then vanish— as though
the world
is unmindful of its need to be named.
Something moves where nothing should,
a shape
unfastening
from the dark— the air
tastes
faintly of iron,
as if the night
has bitten
its tongue and chosen not to speak.
I stand still long enough
to feel it
notice me— this gentle erasure,
this patient unmaking.
And for a moment I am not a body,
not a voice,
just something
waiting
to be
found or lost in the same soft hand.
Photo credits: Pinterest
Posted for Open Link Night #407 (+Live) at dVerse Pub
8 Responses
Love the way you personify the fog… reminds me a bit of the beginning of Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck.
Thank you so much, Bjorn 🙂 so glad the poem resonated with you 💄❤️
You’ve caught the mystical air of fog.
Thank you so much, Ken 😀 so glad you liked it 💄❤️
Such a vague border, lost and found, it takes so little to become one or the other. That taste of iron suggests the speaker has no say in the matter.
You’ve captured the ephemeral in exquisite detail, Sanaa, perfectly so!
Beautiful, Sanaa, especially your ending lines.
This describes a cat so well….
lingers at doorways
like
a secret it’s not ready to tell.
I love how you took the opening line, played with it and made it your own, Sanaa, like a cat! You captured fog in ‘streetlights blur into halos, each one a quiet confession’, the ‘shape unfastening from the dark’ and air that ‘tastes faintly of iron, as if the night has bitten its tongue and chosen not to speak’.