Orooj-e-Zafar

Sinking until we stand

after Andrew McMahon's Don't Speak for Me

most of you clings to the back of my eyelids,

pulsating every time the sun kisses my skin.

your grip branches into thready veins and before long,

I am the forest I have always been.

we disintegrate me, together. break branch to twig.

home to debris. wall to brick.

here, you can only blind me.

here, the fall only feels like floating.

our raft swims at high tide, driftwood slipping in

and out of help. we wait for pirates, hoping

we don't drown before our execution.

perhaps, we can sink until the sea bed

becomes the ground we walk on.

water balloons our lungs, we barely resist.

you shift between, behind, my eyes; reigning

my eyelids, shuttering them shut.

somewhere near the bottom, we remember

we've got our eyes closed.

Your Thumbelina

I stitched hushed nights in blue lingerie

together with the hem of my torn

fabric hurdles for all the times we felt

alive together, for every morning

you heard my heart climax as it skipped,

slipped into our interlaced synapse,

for each relapse I allowed after blowing

into emotional confetti before your eternally

quiet sights.

For once, don’t

scan my weathered heels

up to my laced torso. My dear sussuras,

you live inside my ears

and I tighten your vocal cords

with my aural vigour. I hear

your evanescent stay

closing in; can you

smoothen me out

with the sleepless incandescence

of a night we spent

rediscovering the human

body together?

My shoulders bear the weightless-

-ness of the narcoleptic mess I made

of this implosion. I try my best

to remember

that pictures lie and I smiled

at you too soon,

too late,

that we are better than the blues of meant

apologies and sincerities; I am just

as

small

as the echo

of your stirrup,

humbly residing

in your ear canal

as you slip into the expected tide

of your vowed Atlantic.

On Not Traveling Anymore

"You brought the rain with you, now

take it back home." Every time,

my parents took us away for a weekend,

we changed the winds in our wake.

We left behind a fight so loud, it echoed

in my dreams, nights after.

I remember thinking, "I should not alter more

than I already have." How does one tread the earth

lightly when all my ears let in was a hundred ways

to leave a mark on this world? Even when I left,

the air followed me. I carried my wrong

in breaths I was always too hesitant to take.

Accountability so terrifying, honesty oscillated

in my hand tremors. I took the monsoon back

whenever I could. I soothed its thunder

to tree rustles, limited its all-consuming rain

to secret cheeks. Its lightning to nur

in my shuffling rosary.

Now, I am static. The air is angry.

Monsoon turned to thunderstorm.

Stillness to heatwave. Now,

no one takes blame for the weather.

Bio: Orooj-e-Zafar is a storyteller/spoken word poet based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Her work explores the human condition, more specifically unabridged themes of trauma, mental health, reclamation and emotional resilience and has been widely published online in places such as Words Dance, Quail Bell Magazine, Off the Coast, Rufous City Review and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Offline, Orooj performs at local and national events like TEDx PIEAS and Islamabad Literature Festival 2017. She was also the recipient of the second annual Judith Khan Memorial Poetry Prize, the winner of Where Are You Press Manuscript Contest 2016, and the author of HOME AND OTHER DEBRIS, her debut chapbook released in July 2017.