Author: Saima Ahad

I stand
Dust wears me
A futile shelter
I would be found before sunset
I tell you
This city is dying
Dying (of bustling voices)
Dying (no memories speak)
Dying (time stitched with death)
Nights hardly arrive here
Days split in between
Smoke and sun
You keep looking
It is all grey
So little of breaths
So much of haze
I turn pages
Of my diary (my only past)
Like a new light
At the edge of streets
It beams
But does not call my name
What if they hear me?
You tell me
We will be back soon
Everything
Will fit in right places
But
What if there were no right places?
And I tried fitting in shadows
What if I held emptiness?
And raised it as hope all this time
What if there was never a new light?
And I hallucinated its abandonment
You say again
It will be okay
Some day?
And I know
Home will feel so foreign
No new walls
Can replace its name