Poem by Tabish Nawaz

The first time I learned reading
I stitched alphabets together
cobbled them into words,
proclaiming, after each letter,
the shape of the sound.
The seams in the fabric of the language
                                                       would echo
the silence sweeping around them.
I could hear the spaces – that separated the letters
their shivering
even when all stood together, meanings shrouded them
the hum held them straight.
The unspoken, the unwritten trembled
as the needle of my tongue sew them
with the thread of the language
into the fabric of our conversation
in porous, see-through clothes.