Open 2021 Poems - Simra Sadaf

 

Kite and Manjha

By Simra Sadaf

I want you to call me a mad poet when I write a sloppy P in a ruled book that I hide under a black cloth, the one that Amma hands me to cover my head, the one that wraps your eyes.

 

Then I write the letter O chubbier than your niece’s dimpled cheeks and hope that one day you would need me the way a kite needs Manjha to kiss the wide sky.

When I stretch E’s last line, I remember typing an Eid Mubarik message, the thought of hitting the send button cut my body in half— the religious part believes my 3am prayers would change my Qadr, the other half likes to dip its mouth in raspberry vodka.

 

The vertical line doesn’t touch the horizontal one in my T, the way your lips don’t meet when you say Allah Hafiz. I keep seeing your hand waving goodbye at me like the last leaf swaying on its own.

 

I write R a little farther from T, because a POET is never close to anyone but other poets who romanticised death so much that they kissed it once and for all. One day I’ll tell you how Shams walked miles looking for Rumi, how he made Rumi’s poems/emotions fathomless.

 

Y looks like the road that’s in front of your house where a mango tree is ignorant of coconut tree’s presence, or maybe the former is just arrogant because it’s the king of fruits, but I crave for your skin more.

 

You’ll find the notebook full of scattered prayers, sketched jawlines and poetry where God resides in semicolons. I’ve built your name holier than the mosque my father goes to pray for my destiny, and I to come alive in the last three letters of your name.

 

Simra Sadaf from India has a Masters in English Literature from University of Madras. She pursued her bachelors in Sociology and has an abundant knowledge about the workings of a society which she incorporates her writings. She loves the art of storytelling and someday hopes to write something that will leave a lasting impact on the readers. Literature drives her spirit and words churn her soul.

 

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