If there is one language common to the world, it is the language of affection. Attractions swells, sex sells, motherhood tears the body apart, nostalgia seeps into the soul, heartbreak reverberates in the thrum of our blood as humans continue to love and lose. I’ve been trying to encapsulate those affections that different languages across the world express, through a myriad of stunning words. Sensations of love, lust and loss are fleeting through the course of our lives and yet forever, as we grow into the people we are meant to be. Eternal. So here it is – a series of poetry that captures affection in every syllable and word.

Dictionary of Affections is The Zoya Project language, common to the world…

LACUNA

‘a blank space, a missing part’

There are these absences
Sitting stagnant
Today
That prickle the air.
They sit here
At our table,
The dahlias in the crystal vase
Drooping
With the heavy weight of it.
Like the end of a long day,
The feeling of honey and anaesthesia
Running along every vein
Every muscle,
Every cell,
Sticky and dense.
They run around empty spaces and crevices
The space where
Your footsteps
Are prints in dusty floors,
Lying stagnant.
They urge me to reach out,
To tell you
To clean up before you go,
This mess,
This stifling presence of honey and anaesthesia,
These absences –
Lying stagnant at my table.