Autumns

Existing through
autumns,
a feeling like
the last leaf,
I know the winds
are never kind,
so I press my hands
against the soil,
and ask it to
be gentle when it
swallows me,
my skin is sensitive,
I said, it has never
known warmth,
or snow.

I have forgotten
kindness,
or what else a human’s
throat could do but
itch and swallow pills,
I sit in my room
every six hours,
swallowing them,
so my chest
doesn’t stifle,
or my gut
doesn’t writhe,
or my mouth
doesn’t freeze,
again.

I have always loved
the words gentle
and perennial,
but you are neither,
neither are these
poems I hide behind,
or the breeze that
smells like kerosene,
sometimes your
remnants are like
grenades,
and I am a field
full of explosive
land mines,
and your feet
are never still,
just like your
loyalty.

As the sun’s neck
sits on my rib cage
every morning,
burning like
the city of Rome,
burning the walls,
burning my book
with 30 poems and
a song about
summer rain and
moonflowers,
burning my nicotine
stained fingertips,
my skin,
everything is burning,
your repentance is
not enough to
put out the fire,
my pearled eyes,
my ventricles,
my books,
not my books.

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Simra Sadaf, from Chennai, India, has pursued her Master’s in English Literature. With a did Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, she has an abundant knowledge about the workings of a society which she incorporates in her writings. Literature drives her spirit and words churn her soul.