Tag: Monhejo Daro

HALF PLATH, HALF PRAYER 

I sit at the altar, 
my hands clasped
for a prayer,
but they bleed.
There is a chapel
in my throat,
but all the hymns
I want to sing
bristle my
throat.

By thirteen,
I wrote
odes to fawns.
By sixteen, 
I kissed 
a razor and 
called it my
Saviour.
By twenty-five,
I no longer
dog ear
my books
for they
bleed.
So, I kiss them
goodnight
before I sleep.
Out of guilt,
I no longer pray.
Redemption lies
beyond.

Sometimes,
I dream of 
Plath and she
tells me:
Write till it kills
you wholly.
So, I lay awake,
my soul yearns
to be heard.

The pen or knife,
sinner or saint—
contradictions
lie in me and 
I cannot breathe.
Half Plath, half prayer;
one hand holds a light,
the other holds a rosary.
Paralysed by the ghosts
of the past,
I do not know
what I'll hold next.

THE GRAMMAR OF WOUNDS 

My mother corrects my Urdu,
as if it were a wound I should have known how to clean.
Little does she know that it remains like a broken record.
It is on repeat… 

To her, it is silk on tongue, gliding effortlessly.
To me, it is a thorn, every word bleeds.
It is a torn hem I keep stitching wrong.
Her tongue folds while mine cracks,
like the ruins of Mohenjo Daro.
Specks of my identity forever lost in time,
I speak in syllables that ghosts cannot recognise.

Each correction is a reminder that I no longer
reside in my own body.
The symphonies morph into a no man’s language,
this remains my swan song.
Yet I write relentlessly till my fingers blister.

One day, I’ll know how to write,
knowing what I bled was not in vain.
I will soon speak Urdu correctly as resilience.