article by article
let me drag out all these piles of dirty laundry
crowding this tiny apartment of mine
let me stretch cables from rooftops of the city’s tallest buildings
a thousand pegs I keep for this very day intimates
flapping in the wind against glass and cement
the unwashed declaring
themselves in the sun
blood ridden dark stubborn stains
for all my people to see
cry from the stench of it
sister you too?
brother this is the way through
& this is how I need you
how the skyline burns in colour today

Zehra Naqvi is a Karachi-born writer, editor, and educator raised on unceded Coast Salish territories. She has written and edited for various publications internationally. She is a winner of Room's Poetry Contest. Her work has also appeared in Tin House, The New Quarterly, The Express Tribune, Dawn, Jaggery, Routed Magazine and is forthcoming in Living Hyphen. Zehra holds an MSc in Migration Studies and an MSc in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, where she recently completed her studies as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Oxford, she studied English and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Zehra is currently located in Oxford, where she is working on a book of poetry and prose.

Image by Tatiana Zanon @tatizanon