The Mockingbird Learns My Heartbeat.
By Aeesha Abdullahi Alhaji
on a troubled night,
the sky swallowed the moon,
omens folded the dark
into a
damp velvet,
the bird came as a showstopper,
darkness for eyes, without souls inside
with a throat wide like endless tunnel
with wings like caskets, wide open.
oh god, it sang—
with a voice that did not belong:
to the books of hymns, a mother’s cry,
every lyric was stitched with terror,
echoes dragging the helm of death,
i felt the shift of bones, yet it sang with
a chariot of crows.
i ran through hollow fields,
the voice & chorus followed me,
widening the cracks on earth.
my words were no longer mine,
yet, it sang with borrowed tongues
i only fed it my fears, i only became enslaved
every cockcrow, it waits for me in dreams
it perches in my nightmares,
i cannot dream nor pray—
the mockingbird sang deeper,
the song is stuck in my throat,
what if someday,
it learns my heartbeats.
Bio: Aeesha Abdullahi Alhaji writes poetry that dwells in the space between dream and nightmare, drawing on folklore and inherited fear to explore memory, the body, and the self.
Author’s Note:
The Mockingbird Learns My Heartbeat: explores mimicry as threat — a voice that learns your grief and prayers, then echoes them back distorted.
