Fridays in the Park (or how to make a boy holy) by Omar Sakr

Fridays in the Park

(or how to make a boy holy)

& i can’t help but notice his hips first, bumbag slung low,

as the train doors open at Roxburgh Park. & i take in the

trackies, his shadowed jaw, the slabs of concrete arcing

over him. & as Arab boys are timeless or else stuck in time,

i breathe easier in their pause, their familiar inescapable

heat. & later, i spot him in the supermarket & know he

knows i’m watching the way a shepherd tends his flock

or the way the ocean shivers when the moon slides onto

its back. & there is no significant body of water in the

suburbs, nothing to drown in yet we drown anyway. & i

take him in the long grass of the park, i taste him in the

weeds, knees wet with mud, the night buzzing with the

deaths of mosquitoes. the wild silence after, mouths heavy

with musk, is complete & even the birds are mute with

love in their nests. there is no song except our huffed

breaths, the shuffle of grass bending beneath us, tickling

skin, the whole world an animal gone quiet. i asked

my aunty about the supernatural hush i felt & she said

the animals stand still in holy awe, they know the Day

of Judgment will fall on a Friday. & this is why neither

of us made a sound, why his fingers bruised my lips to

crush the gasping as one of us disappeared into the other,

why the park bristled with jungle knowing, the kind

with teeth, why it felt like the end of the world &

the beginning, o the beginning of another.