Scheherazade,
BY RASHA ALDUWAISAN
the coffee shops are closed and Princes
are in their bedrooms watching Netflix.
I air camphor from my father’s pillowcase,
wait for the doctor to call with better news.
Last night, I streamed “The Undoing” to forget —
Jonathan in a tangle of he-did, he-did-not.
Oh Scheherazade, I know it’s just a show,
but my nerves can’t take it.
I am searching for a different kind of story!
I heard about a fisherwoman in Ras Al Khaimah
who caught the same fish over and over again.
Can we begin with her? Her looking out
over a clear, waveless sea.
Say her children are at school. Say the ground
stops moving. Say she eats her lunch on the same
blackened rock. Say she sells her fish
straight away, picks her children up after a clear,
waveless day. The doctor tells us
there has been a delay with the scan.
Say the air is full of droplets,
but they are hard and ruby-coloured.
Say she plucks them one by one, strings them
into a necklace she bares on her chest.
