THE REMAINS OF SKY

Memoona Zahid

“You remember too much, / my mother said to me recently. / Why hold onto all that? And I said, / Where can I put it down?” 

— Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

the night when I thumbed the spine of our photo album 

Pari said I don’t recognise anyone in there 

I try to forget I try the goodhonesthard way 

keep my eyes down spill buttercups from my mouth

I’ve been swallowing magic 

tricks and laughing my insides 

out

I carry tangerines in my backpack

crushed at the bottom  I carry my first name which mama

forgot to put on my birth certificate

      what’s in a name Pari says

I carry a lock of my own hair I carry the smell of sweat and sleep  

and longing I carry sediment from my solar plexus  

crushed at the bottom

let go of all that Pari says 

and lets her smile curl into the palm of my hand like the sun newly opening itself 

as she dredges weeds from my corners but I simmer I dig 

my heels into this ground 

as thousands of pigeons halt in the remains of sky

not a flutter or a gentle swoop

just the thud of a hawthorn tree chopped

Memoona Zahid is a poet and Ledbury critic based in London. Her work has previously been published in SAND Journal, LUMIN, The Runaways Project, Tentacular, PAIN (Partus Press), and bath magg. Memoona holds an MA in Poetry from University of East Anglia (where she was recipient of the Birch Family Scholarship) and a BA in English with Creative Writing from Goldsmiths.