After many years
over-eating, sleeping
with a pillow
behind my back,
I conclude:
mittens when found
go up on the nearest
fencepost; also,
this city is too big to be small.
I need elbow
room. I need room
to jostle, elbow-wise
accidentally
into new bodies,
until the day I lean.
Noor Naga is an Alexandrian writer who was born in Philly, raised in Dubai and studied in Toronto before returning to Alexandria to live with her grandmother. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Puritan, The Sultan's Seal, The Hart House Review, Muftah, and This is Worldtown. She was shortlisted for ROOM’s 2015 Fiction Contest, and she is a recipient of The Canada Graduate Master’s Scholarship, The Mary Coyne Rowell Jackman Graduate Scholarship and The Avie Bennett Emerging Writers Scholarship from the University of Toronto where she received her MA in Creative Writing.
