Your hands shook the whole time

Winters feel less like winters, the sun
burns on my fragile skin. December. Tell me it's
December. Forget the dirt in my hair. When
I was 10; I hid myself far away. A spectral
shape amidst dust and sawdust. One
with dying furniture. Nana found me, climbing
all five stories, morning fog in his breath. I wake up early
nowadays, collapsing into the dew. January
fog in my hair, green now against this light
that turns twice and faces you in a revealing glance.
somedays I am still in that minibus which became your
altar. An altar is a collection of things you love. Like
a story, pieced together in each breath. I inoculate
each word with meaning, somehow this poem is about
you. Why wouldn't it be? I am made from your bones.
When I was seven, you wrote me a letter. Your
hands shook the whole time, I imagined you writing
in the cold. When I was twenty-three, the letter broke
into fragments in my hands. We make altars wherever
we go. At night I surround myself with the desire
to disappear, opening my window to the dogs barking
outside, there's the gap between two buildings where
moss grows in the rain. I imagine myself laying there, an altar.

Raian Abedin is a poet, a student of Biochemistry, and a contributor to The Daily Star.