Kimberley Banjoko

"As Degrees Fall"

by Kimberley Banjoko

October leans against my windowsill,

A mug cooling in the hush.

Turmeric, nutmeg, swirled into oat milk—

Golden, aching, slow to settle.

My mind weightlessly drifting towards our marvelous mid-summer meetings.

The one who left the door ajar

did so quietly, silently, and called me in.

I stepped inside, a room made of perfectly pixelated glass.

A grid humming with distant coordinates, not for now but a season folded In amber and ardor

I mark it, but with ache.

The sound of my heart’s beloved

Echoes through chambers I cannot enter.

I sip slowly from a vessel,

already duplicated in your orbit —

Warm with memory, waiting for echo to arrive.

The fog of time arrives without asking,

Folding the now and into the not yet.

Watchers emerge in the morning hush—

Soft hooves, curious, as if they

remember what was never spoken aloud.

One tilts his head, eyes

Catching the sun—

Glimmering like the polished quiet of velvet rooms,

Where silence is taught before

Speech and posture is forged into a profession.

Warm enough

still, come before frost.

Two weeks, for sure.

Thirty twice, another shore.

Held still by paused longing,

an unmoved tide.

Wilt thou wait,

whilst the fog wilts us,

and we wilt under this weight.