Sarah Ghazal Ali

Last Night, Noor Jahan Visited

for the length of a song. For four minutes
in the murky light between dream & dunya

we lined our lips & grinned in burgundy,
berried bliss, singing together

what I’ve never sung awake. Don’t ask me
for that first dream again, jaan-e-jahan,

don’t remind me that there are more wounds
in this jahan, meri jaan, than those exacted

by the hand of first love. I loved first
my mother, the emissary God released

in a cloud of cigarette smoke, a spritz of White
Diamonds on either side of her neck.

All my life I’ve dreamt of standing
on the fire escape in Bed-Stuy, looking out

as she came for me with a churi
in her hands. I try to believe myself

God’s mea culpa, fruit cut & left by her door
after an argument. She was wed

to the wrong man—once, she pointed to
the game show host beaming on TV,

said that man wanted me—& I wonder
if she dreams of those alternates. Before baba,

she wanted to be a flight attendant, well-
dressed & lining her lips in some Turkish bathroom.

With which tongue to tell that all my life
I’ve regretted my life, wished it undone

for my ammi? For her second husband
Noor Jahan gave up acting, but never her voice.

Last night we sang as azaad women,
the stage shifting from Karachi to Brooklyn

to the headboard above my sleeping mother.
We crooned until the dream wasn’t a dream,

until the hiss of our hips shook even the bed
& she woke up singing, unaware

for just a moment of her life, the one
I can’t return to her.