Underground Valley

Zebib K. A.

We arrive at these
enterprises with strange maps.

Love
a vault of sealed letters;
Between her to she,
they to them
I to you.

an underground childhood bunker
year after year
more food cans and blankets.
Adulthood is an apocalypse.

Frightful shadows, hidden blooms
Shall we grab them?
Rip them out of their roots, to the core?

Try on breathing.
They foretold cracks in the concrete;
let the world split open.

Sun kin
a warming;
brown, softening butter
sunbathing nipples, what a riot.

Longing is a rushing of oxygen.
Electricity invented,
lighting up old store rooms.
The opening of trap doors.
No wasteland. We’re tasting fresh fields.

---

Zebib K. A. is a writer and psychiatrist. She recently moved from NYC to Scotland to do a Masters in Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh. She has been published in The Rumpus, Apparition Lit, The Selkie, Nightingale and Sparrow, and more. She comes from a black, immigrant background, identifies as queer, and explores these multiple identities in her writing. She can be found at medium.com/@pegasusunder, Twitter @pegasusunder1 & Instagram @pegasusunder.

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