pain

What happens to the version of ourselves that paints or writes a poem when in fury 

because more or less our pain is only ours to be fully understood,

our words are snatched from our throats and used against us,

we walk the streets aimlessly 

leaving a city after a city after a city

finding ourselves to be nothing but alone,

emotions crawl on our faces,

our thoughts shamed for being expressed too late

bearing a death sentence for wanting freedom from quiet,

stillness so deafening that I wrote this to the creaking of the fan above me as an ant crawled the length of my body

pain, by Madiha Shams Khan

I am a lover

I will love you in a letter

very late at night

I will love your name

and the musk of your skin,

did i ever tell you 
that your hands

are like those of the ancient gods

I will love

the symphony of your warm long breaths

and your name that is a sweet prayer

I will love you

even when my letters don't reach you

when i am just a hair clip on a dresser,

a patch of yellow paint on a grey wall,

an old postcard pressed in a diary,

just a name rolling out of your mother's tongue 

I am a lover

I will love you even after they bury me

and long after
when I am nothing but the soil under a tree

I am a lover, By Madiha Shams Khan