Noor Shahzad

Spring

after Kathleen McGookey

How the air moistens itself like a body. How the river walks
forward again, like the thirst you forgot made a home
in your throat. How the faucet runs warmer, like a hummingbird
up from sleep. Go on, tell everyone you know to come
take sips from the sink, this sweeter water keeping itself secret
through winter. Secret becomes logic again: we turn
the tap for water. Your hunt for money shrinks
in damp dollars falling from the dryer. All that time
spent searching, saving, for this house to say take this gift. We
open the windows to air out aches and pains, to let in
a dogwood-lined sigh from the street. We hang our
grief to dry, we forget it to the coo of a mourning
dove.

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Noor Shahzad received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.