December Offerings/Not Karachi
MANAL AHMED
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CARLA PELOSOFF
Christmas lights hung on
the icy lobes of trees,
and the frosted skin of a darkened river
beneath me.
Nighttime mosquito fest by the Charles,
then the burning red halo on each shin as keepsake.
Sheet after sheet of blue rain.
And the sudden gray geometry of a building I could never name —
Still, I’ll choose to stay.
Pandemic Car Crash/Pictures Of Us
The night you sent me a broken
voice message, told me you crashed your car
into a white Corolla at the Shujat crossing
and woke up someplace else, small and afraid,—
I looked at pictures of us for hours.
It was 3 AM and darkness was a quilt so heavy,
morning seemed impossible.
When light came, finally, I sent you a box of doughnuts.
You sent back a picture of the lemon-meringue one,
yellow curd spilled everywhere, sunlight suspended —
‘yum favourite flavor!!!’
I couldn't stop looking at those three exclamation marks,
thin pixel trees glowing blue on my phone screen —
their perfect, rounded endings
Stubborn proof of your small, sweet life.
Hair
It’s through the window that the neighbors’ violin
leaks in, Hallelujah on a Sunday.
It’s through the window that I watch her
cut his hair, and through the window
that I watch the hair
float through the steps of
the fire escape and fall
to the ground, black
smoke curling into a green sea.
She laughs as she snips
and this glass skin
between us is
useless, so thin
I can hear everything,
clear as shard.
It’s through the window that the light comes in,
then doesn’t —
At night’s twelfth hour,
I watch myself in the mirror, scissors in hand,
black snow descending slowly into the sink,
the day’s long photographs finally
snipped off my head.
Manal Ahmed is a writer from Karachi, Pakistan. She currently lives in Boston.