Sharh on Sahih al-Bukhari 5460 by Reyzl Grace

September 22, 2025September 21, 2025

[225 words]

—for E. R. Shaffer

When
I offer to
stay the night,
/ even if only
on your couch,
/ so that I can
make you pan-
cakes / before
the call for
fajr, / you balk
—tell me
you’re em- barrassed /
at how it gets you off to imagine / me
your servant. // But Ramadan / is ending,
and I am awake. / I am listening to a reading of
Sahih / al-Bukhari, and a run / to the 24-hour grocery
/ for baking powder is as good / as sa’ee. // When I return
/ and take up the whisk, you rise, / lay your arms like the seam
/ of the first dawn across / my shoulders and sigh with the robins,
/ asking why I would do / so much for you. // The Prophet said, /
“When your servant brings your food to you, / if you do not ask
him to join you, / at least ask him to take / one or two handfuls, /
for he has suffered from its heat.” I flip / the pancake. // When I
bring you your food, / you ask me to join you, and still / you give
two handfuls / of your cheeks as we kiss, two / handfuls of your
breasts before / the sun rises. Does the skin / of my hands
not witness, // my love, / how the last nujaym winks /
above us? How I, whom you take / for selfless,
depend on your ṣadaqah? / How your servant
has suffered—all / this long night
through—from heat.

Reyzl Grace is a writer, librarian, and translator whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other periodicals. Currently a poetry editor for Psaltery & Lyre, she lives as an expat in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.) Find more of her at reyzlgrace.com and on Bluesky @reyzlgrace.

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