Word Island Poem by Saba Anjali

Words break with waves
On a distant shore.

A stream drowned in the sea...
The mountains had cried.
And a thousand stories
Slept in a water grave.

I was retrieved from the ocean
Hidden in a shell with a hermit crab.
Longing for days when moonlight
Traced it's fingers across my lonely back.

This is a lost island
Refuge for drifting souls
Sailors, without a map...

The amphibious me
Crawled up the sky;
And the birds flew upside down...

I see skyscrapers on the ocean bed.
Order that shames civilisations...
And an old woman sits at the bottom
Carving shells and colouring corals.

How do the fishes know
They're not swimming upside down?
How do they separate
Depths from heights?
Or is it the sky that is inverted...

Clamps in pockets
Salt on the face
In a dream that won't last forever
Nor would leave any trace...

Who would believe in my island
We are past the age for fiction;
I burnt my hands and my net
When I tried to salvage the sun.

Saba