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Enchantress
You arrive like the first word
of a language I didn’t know
I was born to speak—
the way you bite your thumbnail
when you lie,
how your keys jangle
three times
before the lock gives in.
That Tuesday glance
splits me clean:
before you,
after you.
Your laugh tastes like
the last cigarette I never smoked—
bitter, necessary,
harm I’d choose twice.
I follow your perfume
through morning streets—
vanilla-cedar, armor-scent—
until I’m beneath your window
realizing
I don’t know your last name.
In my dreams, I knock.
In my dreams, you answer.
But I wake to this:
your coffee cup on my counter,
lipstick print
like a code I can’t break.
Today I saw you with someone else.
Her fingers laced in yours
like they belonged,
like they’d been there forever.
Your laugh carried,
her hand on your chest—
the street tilted.
A stranger asked
if I was lost.
Yes, I said. Yes.
I bit my tongue until it bled,
walked home
tasting iron and regret.
If you came to my door now,
you’d find only
the hollow where hunger
carved my name.
Still, I inhale the ache—
this fool who called the echo a promise,
who mistook wanting you
for deserving you.
Tonight,
I’ll say your name
like it’s just another
Tuesday.
Copyright ©
Saeed Koushan
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