After Stationery

Agha Shahid Ali, one day, through his words, filled this world with paper/write to me/so I resemble a dog with a neck like a question mark/striking through pages/writing to you/turning you into a god with every wreath made out of white sheets/at night I look past my window/moon like a bruise hoisted on the shoulder of onlookers/as they draw their curtains/resembling a poem/every poem resembles another/I spent years writing to you/I am 24 now/trying to grow hair on my face/the absurdity of it is that I admire my skin a little bit more/my heart lives inside the vanity of remembering the names of flowers/I could write them down for you/weave them together/it might resemble a poem/or it might be a desert, with large swathes of glass/and an oasis where they will sew our sternums together/and it will rain/do you remember the rain/I am still trying to find ways to describe its smell/my mother says it smells like my father/both of us cling on to words like they were humans/the entirety of a song is a small village/I do not belong there, in those songs/I create with reams of dark ink/I am the night sky/give me words, moon/write to me.

Raian Abedin is a poet, a student of Biochemistry, and a contributor to The Daily Star.