Floating in Words🪄

Bowtie From heat— I sought refuge in the cold chamber. From the cold chamber— I fled to the coffin. And from the coffin? Only empty hands bury the solar system inside me. Though coffins may be the cheapest rooms in real estate ads, no cell is more solitary than a grave. Please remember us— all of us— in a single tomb. We are buried incomplete because our bones are stuck in your throat. With your umbrella, you tried to take revenge on the sun. But didn’t you hear? Even “sun” whispers “water.” From the conspiracy between rain and sunlight, grant the dream of a rainbow to the evaporated hope of water— now sold in aquariums. Though bottled, a state of fish has been dismantled. Which fountain can survive its neck severed? Where on the river’s throat do the dam’s fingerprints vanish in purification plants? From bruised throats, a museum of fingerprints has emerged. Even the observer has closed his eyes. These tickets— which field of vision do they open? Desire— drenched between the eyes and the sea. From all the temptations that chased a kite, only a diamond remains on the geometry test. A butterfly divided the world between two wings. For the crime of unusual colors, it was denied a colored photograph. The butterfly’s bright thoughts escaped the cocoon too soon. In an age of color extinction, the colors chose suicide in black-and-white themes. I didn’t paint— but I stretched new canvases for old paintings. Photos, forgotten by memory— yet one of them will settle, eventually, in the frame of our obituary. As painters and photographers, we agreed on the truth of faces, yet clashed as deeply as our tools. Still— our hands are the latest fashion in bowties: designed to grip collars. — Aref Moallemi