Sascha Aurora Akhtar

Intimacy

My wretched bits

of life, gathering

holding them

safely

This cage

of body, pain

sometimes clutching

messy

heart-nest

U, the only

continuity

I come back 2

people R always

Hidin’

wearing masks

I may never know in a certain place 2gether

what memory appears 2 u – this is who we R –

dISgUIsIng pain,

DisGuIsInG pleasure

the looming castle

we visit stones

set

in melancholic anatomy

both of us carrying

our nests of memory

tenderly

tread we, tenderly

so as not 2

pull

them

apart

these tiny houses

of pAinMeMOrY

of a LoVEsOnG

nestled in the

t.b.c

***

Time is a clusterfuck

of accidents

burning

I am exhausted

from the effort

of silencing it.

***

Poem

entitled:

“Passenger Incident”

***

Sascha Aurora Akhtar is a writer and editor based in London. She is the author of two poetry collections The Grimoire of Grimalkin (Salt) and 199 Japanese Names for Japanese Trees (Shearsman). Her work is widely anthologised in seminal works such as the Reality Street UK 2015 edition of “Out of Everywhere,” and English Pen’s “ Poems for Pussy Riot”. Her work has been translated into Armenian, Portuguese, Galician, Russian, Dutch and Polish. She performs internationally. Most recently her story “ The Nature of Wounds,” appeared in STORGY (2017).