ISSUE 11
Sarah Aziz
AS A RULE, YOU PROMISE TO APPEASE THIS CHILD
six hours, and I was born
a doll. with an amorphous
heart pieced and stacked on
the saucer like a beehive, I
learnt to pull up my socks. A
charcoaling wind caught up with
the monologues and quelled me
amber pink. Sickly with gaunt
browbones and pudgy hands. You
said you wish you had known me at
twelve. Sometimes I do, too, but the
spilt guts of looking glass foaming down
my chin would have splintered you dry. Some
times the cyclones will assail those in high-rise
Kolkata buildings, too, gushing through the door
gap of a third-floor verandah and riddled with questions
like paper boats from girlhood. Like an orphan I flung my arms
round your neck that evening, asking and asking and asking. How much
longer until you clean the blood in my mouth? You split the wooden doll in half
and the earth swears to paint me once again.
Sarah Aziz is a poet, translator and illustrator based in Kolkata, India. She is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Literature at Loreto College, University of Calcutta. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Mantis, The Good Life Review, and more.