I was hoping to cherish

I was hoping to cherish

That part of you;

The part of you

That doesn’t sin.

I was hoping to cherish

The child in you;

The part of you

That laughs and cries.

I was hoping to cherish

The love in you

The part of you

That feels so small.

(The lost soul in you;

The one you’ve been searching your life for,

Past the animosity and suffocation).

If one day all of the ones you knew

Were to judge you

I’d like to think I was the one

Who got you right

The most.

You never know- everything has a beginning but some things never begin.

You fall in love with my beauty

But I have nothing to give.

I long for your love:

Tell me what I have done

And is it as bad as

Being forbidden from your mother’s touch?

(I love new things

So as you can imagine

When I got married:

The pouring of new gifts).

My best friend died:

Autopsy revealed

The secrets he’d been hiding;

The wounds left from

The childhood abuse

And the monster he’d become.

The heart shriveled with suffering

Yet all these bodies

Are just laid there to be numbered;

The lungs exhausted

Revealed how he’d been yelling from ashore

Bleeding and begging for help

Yet was passed on from home to home

Like you graduate from school to school

Until one day you’re naked to the world

And they are concerned about

The crime you committed

And how you will be punished.

I only asked for my mother’s love;

I wanted to belong to her even after belonging in her womb.

I don’t know when the cord was cut

But my soul wanted to run in her vains

Even after she gave birth to me and rejected it.

And when I ran from hate by becoming it:

Body of steel; inside, a child seeking the hand of a loving mother:

I was thrown into solitary confinement,

A number in death row;

You ask me of my last meal?

(I’ve seen my mother beat me, spit on me

Said no one loved me; that I was worthless; Pointed a gun at me at seven, ten, thirteen and fifteen-

Until I turned that gun on someone else)

I say how lovely would it be to taste

The sweetness of my mother’s touch

(Last meals and last feels).

(I love new things

So as you can imagine

When I died:

The pouring of new gifts)

I was hoping to cherish

The child in you;

The part of you

That laughs and cries.

Blood memories

Passsd through and through:

I was hoping to cherish

Some part of you.

~By Maryum Khalid~