Ode to Rimsha

By Eshm Suhaib

They say home and I think

Of your barbous

Wit and how I have feared the

Sharp tongued foxes surrounding me

But never you: I know your strength

Tempered by kindness for me and I

Also know that you spare me

The harshest of your tones.

They say hearth and I know

That wherever my hand would

Find yours, Hestia would smile.

A softening, a malleability

Is what it means to belong:

The way you are carved into my being

The way my hands have been empty

Since we had to let go.

Separated by the seven seas

I still turn to you

In the night; I let

Your voice calm me when you say

you’d like to be a

Hyena in a pack and

I recall when we were scavenging

For acceptance in houses that weren’t quite

Homes and came up bereft:

To you I’ve only ever belonged.

Your fire fuels me,

Made me malleable to your

Touch and you bent me into

A better shape, I am tempered

Too by your patience, reshaped

Me into a pot where I was once

A double edged blade.

A pot doesn’t bleed the hands of

Those who try to wield it, in it

Is stored the stew that

Nourishes our spirits.

A pot like the ones I’d paint and

Plant succulents in, a vessel

For new life to flourish.

I envelop myself in your

Memory and in this cold universe feel

The heat of your arms in

Which I’d lay as we’d hold on waiting for

The sunlight and they’d lie to

Us, tell us that all light in our world

Comes from that orb in the

Sky but it’s not their

Fault that they don’t know your smile.

In this city’s barren iciness I still

Remember the humidity of our

Hometown and how you’d sweat through

Your clothes on your way to

Mine, the sun burning your skin on

That damn motorcycle and I’d

Never been belonged to a

Place. My only home is your

Heart, my only hearth is your arms.

Eshm is a queer immigrant writer, having lived in Pakistan most of her life. She is a lawyer, a painter, a poet. She writes on life and all its consequences.