My phone auto-corrects ‘in sha Allah” to “in shape (of) Allah”

to end a promise with “in sha(pe of) Allah” / is to open a space in one’s statement

Image: phone lying on a table. Photo by Thom on Unsplash

& I’m left thinking / that this phone has danced / on the edge of blasphemy / but perhaps, built / on: a pinhole vocabulary / a famished algorithm / it begs to be read with a deeper mind / say, in shape (of) Allah as in the shape / of a magnificent glory too heavy for the eyes / or in the power of the Omnipotent that transcends our fragile minds / that transcends the known & unknown universe. Perhaps / to end a promise with “in sha(pe of) Allah” / is to open a space in one’s statement / for the remembrance of God / to put a seal on a common word / like a king making a pact / with the emblem of the kingdom. Perhaps / my phone — a believer, set my soul on a journey to see the endless expanse of God’s glory / using the metaphor of a shape / my mind cannot conceive.

Image: Timi Sanni stands facing the camera. He is wearing a white t-shirt with his arms by his side. His background (bushes, a wooden fence, and small building to the left of the frame) are blurred.

Timi Sanni is a Nigerian writer and Muslim literature advocate. His work appears or is forthcoming in Radical Art Review, Cypress, Down River Road, X-R-A-Y Literary, The Drinking Gourd , Ice Floe Press, Doubly Mad Journal, From the Farther Trees and others.

He is the winner of the SprinNG Poetry Contest 2020 and the Fitrah Review Short Story Prize 2020. He was nominated for the 2020 Young Writers and Creatives Award for Short Story/Flash Fiction. He is a recipient of both the NF2W Poetry and Fiction Scholarship. He is a reader for Liminal Transit Review and an editor at Kalopsia Literary. Find him on twitter @timisanni