Finished with my woman…, by Amra Khan
Last contact was 24
hours ago when
you called me honey
and I called you by your
name over and over
again in my head.
Last touch was 5
days ago and last voice
was yesterday afternoon when
we both said please
forget me, and tell me
your troubles. It seems
contact now is about
how not to break each
other or be broken. Which
is fitting — having spread
broken bits about
like flowers and rice at a
wedding, having undone hugely
and done again, we can now
tell each other softly, “It’s you
that matters here — I
am always alright.â€
We are never alright.
We are always just this side
of catastrophe, slightly shattered
and taped whole by the love
of those we do not fully
comprehend. This is okay
too I guess — another time
for passions, another moment
perhaps older, for back
breaking joys — today
and maybe always,
you sit alone with a cigarette
thinking of me and I sit alone
with my lovers, thinking what
you must think of me.
~ Kyla Pasha
Kyla Pasha is a poet and academic from Pakistan. She co-founded Chay Magazine: Sex and Sexuality in Pakistan, South Asia and Abroad, and her first book of poems, ‘High Noon and the Body’, was published in 2010 by Yoda Press, New Delhi. She co-edited ‘Two Loves: Faiz’s Letters from Jail’, a collection of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s prison letters, which was published in 2011 by Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore.
