On Every Night

Sara Elkamel

Every night is a new house with the same address.

It lifts the lid off love.

Night is looking at your face after—

To find its beauty gone.

Every night is a new contusion—

Do you remember how it happened?

Every night is Yes, no, yes, yes—

I was happiest on the other side of this.

Every night you search yourself.

It takes the time it takes.

Night is two lilac bodies with one head—

Whose eyes are your eyes?

Every night is Don’t you recognize me?

Every night is No.

I don’t recognize myself.

about the author
Sara Elkamel

Sara Elkamel

Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist, and translator based in Cairo. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, among other publications. A Pushcart Prize winner, Elkamel was also awarded Southeast Review’s 2023 Gearhart Poetry Prize, the Michigan Quarterly Review's 2022 Goldstein Poetry Prize, Tinderbox Poetry Journal’s 2022 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and Redivider’s 2021 Blurred Genre Contest. She is the author of the chapbook Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021).