Pre-conscious

By Asra Mazhar 

 

 

1. Experimental/Prologue

 

I don’t always feel the pain,

not anymore

not since the pills,

but when I do, I want to grasp it,

hold it like it’s a wisp of smoke or keep it like

a seashell, a sea’s hell, that sounds like

the ocean. I want to hold it and feel it

between my teeth on the tips of my eye

lashes I want it to move me like music

mark me like stretch marks I want to wear

it like a skin because that’s when I know.

I’m alive when I become a home to something

fleeting – like a dream I can’t tell apart from

a memory.

Tangible is two letters and a reflection away

from tangled,

Tri-angled –

Like the veins in the wrist that

hurts so I’ll lick it and

taste   the   salt.

 

1. 24 hours/Epilogue

 

I think that my blood will taste like

Blue raspberry, soapy like bubbles, soapy

like operas, soupy like jellyfish soup, stingy

like summer or sakura, spongy and perhaps

grungy – roaring like rhapsody in the space

between my ears.                             Blood

to settle the stomach                         Blood

to settle the war                               Blood

to thicken the water                          Blood

for irony                                           Blood

for iron deficiency                               –

Deficient like everything else, defiant like

what I want to be, degrading like sitting with my

legs open in front of my mother – martyr – marker –

Marble, like a wisp

Marble,

Like my wrist that

hurts so I will lick it and

taste   the   salt.

 

Asra’s Bio: 

I’m a double major in English and Human Resources Management with a passion for poetry.