By: ALI Hasnain

Instructions for Returning a Borrowed Moon

Do not polish it.
The fingerprints are the point.

Carry it under your coat
through the laundromat’s blue hour,
when every dryer window
turns a small planet by itself.

At the corner, a bus will kneel.
Do not board.
The driver has already seen
what happens to borrowed light.

Take the long way past the bakery,
where flour settles on the night shift
like weather nobody reports.

If someone asks what you are hiding,
say: a receipt, a bruise,
a question with no customer service number.

At the river, unwrap it.
You will notice it has become lighter.
This is normal. Everything borrowed
learns the shape of leaving.

Set it on the black water.
Do not push.
The current knows the address.

On the walk home, keep your hands open.
They will look empty.
They will not be empty.
 

The Building Keeps Our Names

The elevator remembers us
by weight, not language.
Third floor: groceries and winter coats.
Fifth: a stroller, two bags of rice.
Eighth: someone carrying nothing
but an envelope held too carefully.

At midnight the pipes translate
every apartment into tapping.
One knock: heat.
Two knocks: awake.
Three: I heard you too.

In the lobby, the mailboxes
wear their little brass mouths.
Names come loose under clear tape.
New names arrive in black marker.
The building does not ask
which one is permanent.

It keeps the evidence differently:
a dent beside 4B,
chili oil on the stairwell wall,
a child’s star sticker
pressed where the fire door closes.

Years from now, when none of us
can prove we stood here,
the hallway will still lean
slightly toward our footsteps.
 

Small Algorithm for a Difficult Morning

Begin with the kettle.
This is not hope, exactly,
but it has a switch.

While the water thinks,
open one curtain.
Do not negotiate with the whole sky.
One rectangle is enough.

Count three ordinary things:
the spoon, the radiator,
the shoe that survived yesterday.

If memory returns an error,
do not refresh.
Let the old page fail quietly.

Make tea.
Hold the cup with both hands
as if receiving evidence.

Now choose one task
small enough to finish
before fear notices.

Complete it.
Save.

The day may still crash.
You are allowed another session.
 

After the Supermarket Closes

The carts nest badly in the rain,
metal ribs knocking
under the yellow lamps.

Inside, the fruit has gone quiet.
A worker turns peaches
so their bruises face the wall.

The freezer aisle hums
with all the weather
we have learned to manufacture.

A mop crosses produce,
collecting parsley, receipt paper,
one red thread from somebody’s sleeve.

At register six,
a coin waits beneath the conveyor belt,
too small to rescue,
too bright to ignore.

The doors lock.
The automatic voice says thank you
to no one.

Outside, the carts keep touching
in the wind,
as if practicing
how to stay together.
 

Museum of Unsent Messages

Room One contains apologies
with their batteries removed.
Visitors may lift the phones
but hear only the sea.

Room Two displays drafts:
I was thinking—
I should have—
Do you remember—
Each sentence stops
where courage would have entered.

In the central gallery,
a glass case holds
one ordinary hello,
never delivered.
The placard says
it altered three lives anyway.
No explanation follows.

Children prefer the archive
of deleted photographs.
They point at blurred dinners,
parking lots, a hand
leaving the frame.

At closing time, the guards
turn off every screen
except one.

It glows behind the exit:
Are you still there?

No one is permitted
to answer.

###

ALI Hasnain is an Information Science student at CUNY School of Professional Studies in New York.