The Color That Did Not Wait for You

I pressed my thumb into the selvage’s damp edge before you came back — the cloth does not care whose hand closed its own ledger before you came back.

A wife stood at my vat with her husband’s sign cut fresh from tin, dipped it herself, called it his own signature, before you came back.

I did not ask if the shape was truly his, or only her devotion — some griefs need a way to sign for love, before you came back.

Nasrin’s mother taught her daughter’s wrist a heat no roll could enter; the craft was finished in the bone, in the water, before you came back.

They called the girl on Mulov Street a berry before the priest arrived — some words are already true the moment they are spoken, before you came back.

I dyed a red today for no one’s wedding, no one’s mourning, no one’s name — it holds its color anyway, indifferent, before you came back.

Twenty-two years a house was fed on ink some other hand was paid to draw; the net still feeds the mouths who never thought to ask, before you came back.

Zara, what you call the proof of hands, the sea has never asked to keep — the tide does not wait to be signed for. It simply comes back.