Desert Story

Photo: Parsing Eye

I am a tree with no trunk,

a smooth stump

in the middle of the

Sahara with roots

buried in the sand.

You are growing taller

the lizards say

when I try to eat the birds

flying near the clouds I cannot see.

They tell me we are the same

because when the sun didn’t rise

we feasted on stars together,

scaly brother and sister in the middle of

nowhere.

When the sun came back,

I was a full tree

with all the room in the desert to grow,

watered by the moon

and the whispers of lizards.

About the author

Khadija Ceesay (she/her/hers) is a queer Gambian poet from Olathe, Kansas. She has her degree in English literature and culture from Pittsburg State University and is currently pursuing a masters degree in creative writing. She has been writing poetry since 2014 about her racial identity in order to understand herself better and owes much of the ideas behind her work to her relationships with family, both good and bad.

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