even though sunday isn’t our holy day, boy

the sun performs hajj across our room.
your skin is a prayer rug for its knees.
your body hums with recitations.

the wind cleanses its limbs
before it enters our room.
you inhale and the air calls it salaat.

today, you are heaven’s threshold,
a garden of prayer, a paradise
that I would like to die into.

ادخُلوها بِسَلامٍ آمِنينَ

enter it in peace and security.

By Juniper Cruz

Biography:

Juniper Cruz is a Queer Afro-Latinx Muslim poet from Hartford, Connecticut. They are currently an undergraduate student at Kenyon College. Their work has been published in The Atlantic, Lambda Literary, and Puerto Del Sol.