by Ladan Osman
That Which Scatters and Breaks Apart
Everywhere they turn, the walls ask, why, why not.
From every space someone calls a question
and there echoes so many answers, it’s impossible to hear.
Save me, he calls.
Open me, she calls. Divorce me.
Their despair is a bird in an abandoned nest,
its brother has jumped out and died, its sister is dying beside it
and still it perches:
Do I fly?
Can I fly?
You’re here because you said,
I hate you instead of, I’m sorry.
You’re here because you couldn’t forgive
but kept on making stews and hand-washing his good socks,
blowing curses into hot water.
“Knives All Over”, 2013 by Alison Kuo. Digital Photograph
Trouble
I have a chill in my womb.
I have a child in my wound.
Everything is massed up. The sea doesn’t blow.
The wind rivers the sea in the wrong direction.
How will I get along with this man wolfing me?
How will I get alone? He herd me.
It never bordered me before,
what I got as a regard.
We used the hardest language.
We cast threats. We’ll born in hell.
Some of us fall by the waistside
and some of us sore to the stars.
