My Garden Dies, Time Races And I Long To Bloom

Amalou Ouassou, Morocco

This city is no place for one to bloom. It is blue outside on lucky days. Apartments stand up erect as jail bars, gray. And green is Oasis -scarce, too soon a mirage-. The gardens are shut at night as if roots could turn to feet and run off somewhere sweet. This city is no place for one to bloom. It is blue upwards, over the wind swept patterns of clouds. The clouds shoot past comet-like, it is lightspeed, and the calendar leaves turn a sad smell as they swell like storm waves. Salt sea washing over me as salt sea washes over marshes, killing the grains before they bud.This city is no place for one to bloom. The gated garden’s trees grow their spines in metal corsets. The first white buds of what would be the first season flowers turn a sad smell; soon the garden will be a gym complex. This city is no place for one to bloom. Tomorrow is already here. Here, today shoots past comet-like and tomorrow always arrives at the door, lightspeed. Tomorrow is always already here like the sea rage waves and their whiffs of salt, like the flower killers and cement blocks. This city is no place for one to bloom. Already the first white grains of teenage are a mirage drowned in salt and the boxed gray buildings I move through harden the ground and block out the blue. Open up the dew soaked Clematis smell to me at night, when my feet might turn to roots and suck up water from the ground. The days, in a perfect place, I shed the garments and eat up the sun and flower over the grave of Time, that dead man.

Amalou is a poet and writer from Rabat, Morocco. He was a part of the 2021 Between the lines, peace and the writing experience program.