RAJA'A KHALID
Scenes from a Red Cutting Room Floor
scene 1, yoga
black stone floor / black sun eclipse / you pick a spot at the back / crimson bleed, you go deep / pigeon, forehead to the mat / Childish Gambino’s Redbone on speakers fades to / D’Angelo and the Vanguard’s Really Love / Is there anyone else? you’d asked / You’re crazy, her reply / her lie / welcome to practice, sixty minutes, Soul Power / praise the black sun / as scorpion / lizard / cobra / Fever by the Cramps blends into jungle sounds / on your back, shavasana, you are spent / by this life, by this class
scene 3, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love
slow motion Maggie Cheung / up / down / those stairs / moving like a snake / you take / all that you can, and / pull out a cigarette / to make your own silver ghosts / like Tony / someday you too will whisper / your secret into a tree / but for now you watch / the stroke of a finger on an arm / aura / dress / room / if only they had been in the mood for love / letters / they could have told each other their story / at the close they never see / each other again / you press your lips to the bark and whisper / look at me / never again
scene 4, Athens
Exarcheia square / pool of vermillion leaks onto the street / from a neon light / stabbing this electric night / broken hearted / you ask a girl with a teardrop tattoo / if she has some hash while anarchists gather contraband cigarettes into a pile / and set the whole lot on fire / speech / applause / old Greek ladies salvage packs of cigarettes from the heap of ash / you smoke / rising sun will be / blood / tears / you close red eyes, say no more fears
scene 6, nightclub
set up like a cave / long shadows spill into the scarlet / dance and / glittering at their throats pieces of colorful rocks / made of glass / all pass / as the real thing / you hold your arms up high / sweat on your back / icy trickle now and watch the girl dancing in the middle / for she is one of a kind / maroon dress looks white in the warm light of the club and you see the dark smudge on her eye / birthmark / a crimson island on half her face and realize you have never seen anyone so perfect
scene 8, Chinese restaurant
walls of cadmium red / golden paper lanterns overhead / father and son at a table alone / you and the girl watch the boy trace the shapes / dragon / pig / rat / on the paper mat / little baby finger knocks over the glass of raspberry juice / like blood / white table cloth / carnage / an unholy mess / white paper napkins lie pink / shaken like pieces of a life gone sullied and then comes the slap / baby cheek / pink / shaken wet like a piece of a life gone sullied / and the boy runs out into the rain screaming for a mother that won’t ever come back
Raja’a Khalid is a Saudi-born, Dubai-raised (and based) artist and writer with an MFA in Art from Cornell University. She has been nominated for Best of the Net (2025) and the Pushcart Prize (2025) and her stories appear or are forthcoming in Vestoj, HAD, Maudlin House, SAND, KHÔRA, Baffling Magazine, Yalobusha Review, River Styx, Strange Horizons and elsewhere.
