Ghazal for J

Every night I climb out to search for home, some small window.

For a season, it was you, all barefoot summer, all yes, all window.

Safe was new for your mother. She thought she had been rescued,

thought God was there, on the wrong side of the Stonewall window.

We made a patchwork family on drunk playgrounds, singing freedom,

drawing with purple crayons: a square on the wall to call window.

We laughed into morning bowls, Apple Jacks and chocolate milk, you

invincible in your bathrobe and stolen halo before the tall window.

Now even the vampires have wrinkles. Every moment is this cigarette,

crackling in red, out gray, turning to smoke drifting out the fall window.

There is still time. On the railroad tracks, I find your painting, one back

corner empty. I write I miss you, scribble Brook, and scrawl window.

Ghazal for the Outsider

At the station, in the rushing crowd, I am still, a rock in the stream, an outsider.

My aching heart sees you everywhere, but you are a cloud, a dream, an outsider.

Only you understand me, only you know the whole dusty road I have traveled.

Only you know my mother tongue, know I am not what I seem, an outsider.

You disappeared the very night of my surrender, climbed out the window

while I slept. I awoke in a burned field, alone in a moonbeam, an outsider.

Since then, I wander, pretend to forget you who does not want to be found.

I am a river-weeping ghost, a widow ripe at the seams, an outsider.

One day, I will get off this train; one day, you will be there. Until then, I reach

out the window, Brook’s empty fingers trailing the slipstream, an outsider.

Ghazal for Unbraiding

Alone at the playground, I swing under the sunset and drink the spring air, unbraiding.

The sky is alive. Ribbons of rose, honey, and marigold melt into the glare, unbraiding.

Alone with the cat, her soft cheeks and sandpaper tongue, her rumblepurr,

flowing into my chest. She kneads and nuzzles my neck like a prayer, unbraiding.

Alone with the TV, I learn about the war. The girls’ school was one of their first targets.

At the edge of the rubble, I crumble with the mothers while the fathers stare, unbraiding.

Alone in the bed, I untangle the day, hunt for the moment the ocean turned

into thistles. Waves of words of love and hate roll and crash into despair, unbraiding.

Alone behind closed eyes, I become the sounds of the birds and then, the witness.

I fade into the fabric of the universe, absent, present, and aware, unbraiding.

Our minds out to sea, I am alone with you at last. We fall into our secret language.

Brook dissolves in the saltwater and you run your fingers through my hair, unbraiding.

Author's Note

I'm generally against rules, especially in poetry, and I wrote exclusively free verse for most of my life. Then, about two years ago, I tried writing ghazals, sticking to all the classic rules of the form. Something mystical happened: it was so tough that my poems had to take unexpected turns, turns that revealed strange images and truths I would never have found otherwise. I was in love. I never looked back, and now I'm working on a whole book of them. 

"Ghazal for J" is for one of my oldest and dearest friends. "Ghazal for the Outsider" follows the Sufi tradition of addressing the Divine or Unknown in the second person, as the beloved. And in "Ghazal for Unbraiding," I imagine the self dissolving in different moments, different ways, like love or beauty or pain or meditation. Like a braid, coming loose.

About the Author

Brook Bhagat (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction, and two new collections, Exodus with Red Delicious and I Drink from an Ear: Ghazals, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2026 and 2027. She has won contests at Loud Coffee Press and A Story in 100 Words, and she was a finalist for the 2024 Spiritual Literature Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal, an Assistant Professor of English at Pikes Peak State College, and a hardcore Bob Ross junkie. Learn more and contact her for readings and poetry workshops at Brook-Bhagat.com.