Concord Grapes by Shahzadi Fatima Aimen

Raindrops rage outside my window, banging their heads on the glass, the ground, the trees. Another sleepless night of thoughts that have occurred too often like, I wonder if purple knows how angry it looks to me every now and then. I have begun to notice it more: my clothes, a bedsheet my mother bought some ages ago. In markets, lying in baskets, it catches my eye. The pulp stains my fingertips. My socks, now falling apart, are still the pair I mean to grab. Violet flashes when I blast my favourite song. It’s the bruise that flowered beneath my feet in the holy city. Why do you wear black so often, Shahzadi? I look in a distant mirror. I hear the leaves rustling, laughter perhaps. Father just sold our land. I would have loved a home there. She is but a labyrinth, waiting for someone willing to get lost. Sometimes I put my fingers together, imagining a cigarette is there, and exhale so slowly my lungs believe I smoked. The sky watches me so closely. It is the only one watching a teardrop fall.

Shahzadi Fatima Aimen is a university student and a poet from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has appeared in The Writers Sanctuary. She suspects that in another life, she was a moth.