Nikah | Sarah Aziz
~after Saeed Jones
Last night I taped
buttercups beneath my eyelids,
flinching as I caught sight,
One last time,
of your amethyst lipstick
seared on my pulse
One stone.
Your fingers undoing me,
my shirt a pool of rusted guilt around your feet,
imploring us to be good girls again.
Ten stones.
Decked in hallowed blood,
We are the priests, the imams, the guests and
the cousins and aunties twirling like tulips in June and
your grandmother’s anklet still tucked away under beaded cloth in her trunk and
Fifty stones.
Dear God, put love and mercy between us.
I fumble over my Arabic,
Partly because
of your glitter eyeshadow blurring in my periphery,
Mostly because
The outcasts cease to caress the language of God.
A hundred stones.
Go, bird.
Your freedom on my tongue
Our bodies braided with the shadows
Eternal sepulchers coiling around
Our bellies
Two hundred stones.
Two violets,
We floated.
About the author:
Sarah Aziz is a poet, translator, and artist based in Kolkata, India. She is currently majoring in English Literature at Loreto College, University of Calcutta. In 2021, her translation of Bangladeshi activist and author Pinaki Bhattacharya’s “History of Bengal: from Ancient to British Rule” was published.