Untitled by Saima Afreen

Is it enough to be human?

This frail? And this storm?

To hold death in each breath.

And yet dare to live!

To hold the world

in fingers that part seas

and the porcelain of all that lived,

its face broken after the machinery

came to a halt. The steel 

left to fill the mouths of grass

and peepal trees that claim the realm

mulched between the teeth

of a lizard. 

                                   Between chills and cold. A woman

                              stops

stitching phool patti, red

drops colour the white fabric

to fill the house and continents

reeking of hospital smell, rust

of bones, the infected blood—

home to the ancestors that drift

with their dis-eases and disasters

but stop in this timeline to address

the pain through which we remember

them. The future blood awaits

ghost of a light that went down

with a star and a snowflake

to rest its head on a pin

that seals the white envelope

delivered to what transpired once

between the sky and the earth.

Glossary:

Phool patti - an Urdu word meaning a type of embroidery comprising leaves and tiny flowers