Saffron
At dusk I stash
my golden ice cream
in the mini fridge
and turn it up to max,
consigning my old self
to my new twin to lap at sleep,
begin my nightly circling
of the chorus that blooms
in the dark and casts gloom
into me. Dinner’s hearts
of onion climb my throat
and fill my formal mouth –
lonely too, I gather.
Yes, I must be some wild precursor
to the domesticated crocus,
whose sex goes gold
and tastes of hay
in a way the world over
wants. The cultivar
is self-incompatible.
Can only propagate
through vegetative cloning.
People whisper of its aphrodisiac powers,
but the ancients stirred it into tea
to ward off melancholy.
Or wove into funeral shrouds.
No, I never thought I’d have a life with sheep.
Now they bleat outside my window,
wake me at each thin dawn.
The pollen keeps falling from stamen
to stigma, and down the dark tunnel
to nothing. I follow.
What is sown, when watered, grows,
and so the contrapositive.
In Kurdish, gya for plant
is only one letter from gyan, for soul.
Yes, I think to love again
I must excise some part of me.
Must pluck the dark red threads.
Tracy Fuad is a Berlin-based writer and poet from Minnesota. Her debut collection of poetry, about:blank, was chosen by Claudia Rankine as the 2020 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize. Read more.