- Your neighbourhood poet
A DIVISION OF HEARTS
You speak of silences never sought
Except when uncertain; delicate pauses,
Mirror-mild, to say sorry. Sorry for what?
Being here tonight. For the Pakistani blood
That runs through my veins like a disease. It is a disease.
Your skin smells of tightened cords for sale
In heathen shops; you call it Lahore steam.
Memories drenched in the taste of salt paper and cloud
Unmoving, stock-still against a sky
Birthed only of winsome dreams. Of tell-tale beckonings
That bristle beneath the hiss of faceless fire.
I have seen it before, the revealing mark
Of a man who refuses to love what he loved as a child,
And yet does not forget. For such a man, after all,
My mother crossed the border, too.