By Rashida Murphy

This Christmas we’ll speak of ancestral legacies

Those places we cannot visit.
The sleet covered valleys of your people.
The tropical cacophonies of mine.

We’ll speak of borders.
Our children in their locked down cities.
Tiny granddaughters confined to facetime.

We’ll go to the beach.
Look at our fortified city
clinging to the edge of an ancient coast.

This Christmas we won’t equate death with breath.
We’ll be grateful.
We’ll speak instead of unbearable acceptabilities.

Red-skirted imposter

among the festivity
I wait by a burgundy bench
in a dwindling mall

Strangers bearing gifts
avoid my eye in passing
as shutters fall
and lights fade

Only the fate strummer remains
to mouth words
into my Christmas,
sharp-edged, stealthy, replete with loss

I describe my life in a sentence
to a long-ago acquaintance
You walk into this brevity
of silent lifetimes and careful grief

Rashida Murphy is a writer, poet, reviewer and blogger. She has published her short fiction and poetry in various international literary journals and anthologies, including the Westerly, Open Road Review and Veils Halos and Shackles. Her debut novel, The Historian’s Daughter was shortlisted in the Scottish Dundee International Book Prize in 2015 and is available now from UWA Publishing. She lives in an isolated city on the west coast of Australia with a multilingual cat, a patient husband and far too many books.

Banner picture is by Sixteen Miles Out and downloaded from Unsplash.com