Themselves as they storm the cold skin, to be
Merged, meshed into an itchy trickle:
Their hearts burn with the earth’s nurturing zest
That touches with stone-cool, tender gloves
All life, that holds slime-things dear as flowers.
Come watch her lungs melt in a man-set flame,
Her dwindling fingers drown in their own sea;
The snow-flurries, born fierily fickle
Dissolve in rage at this scourge that will rest
Only when it has melted all her loves,
And then its own self, in acid showers.
Ghost Writer
– ‘Hello?’ – ‘Why, hello to you tooI am your ghost, writing to you.’
Doppelghostieganger, what is it ye would say
What queerly weighty secrets whisper left and right?
How to lace your shoes the first time, and come what may
Carry out plates with a face serene and bright?
Doppelghostieganger, I am more wraith than clay
Alien-born, stuck on this earth and longing for flight
For my old home that still likes me best when away;
But there you stand smiling, unwithered by the slight.
– ‘Hello?’ – ‘Why, hello to you too
I am your ghost, writing to you.’
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Petrichor, Remembered Arts, Rigorous, Lunate, With Painted Words, The Dawntreader, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.
Blog: hibahshabkhezxicc.wordpress.com
Twitter: @hibahshabkhez
Instagram: @shabkhez_hibah
