ISSUE V
Khamosh
KALI
This summer,
I am walking
the windswept ruins
of empires.
I call this home. I
take every
street corner
too personally.
I haven’t been home
for years on end
& no one here knows
how old I am.
I am
the darker-skinned
daughter. I slink in
my sister’s shadow.
I was a sickly child & now
I’m cosplaying
as an adult
who faints their way
up & down
the Himalayan foothills.
At breakfast
my Dado
keeps saying
she’s surprised
I ended up
a pretty girl.
East & west meet.
Both are
embarrassed & afraid
to admit it.
Pakistan has
become rigid,
a cockroach in amber
becoming a jewel
& I am
spilled honey,
bees swarming me.
Dado offered me
laser skin treatment
but I’d rather
get a
lobotomy.
Everyone
assumes I’m a
virgin
but I am
a lost girl.
I am
an American—
when I shit,
I shit violently.
I am starting to
dream in Urdu
again
but no one
will believe
me.
Khamosh was born and raised in Austin, Texas. Their poetry is published or forthcoming in A Gathering of the Tribes, Rising Phoenix Review, SPARK Magazine, and A La Moda. They were awarded the 2023 and 2024 Fania Kruger Fellowships for social justice writing, and the Amiri Baraka Scholarship at Naropa's Summer Writing Program. They are the writing director of Saffron, a Central Texas based creative house that centers diasporic voices.