انار

Mohammad S. Razai

The autumn stretched like our neighbours’ smokestacks into the choked sky dotted with clipped feverish kites. It was that time when the smell of burnt oak tingled the noses in Kabul, scratched the hatted heads and hacking chests shook the lanterns.  You coughed your lungs out as the leaves kept falling silently wraith-like. One late afternoon we passed by the bared birches along the uni street, the field grown tense from piles of auburn, crimson, feuille morte.  I almost lost you — dazzled by the old vendor’s pomegranates, انار their lambency and lusciousness — among the pale violet burqas, I kissed your gnarled hands, your ringed finger brushed against my lip all but tearing my open mouth.

Mohammad S. Razai was born in Kabul in the winter of 1986 and came to Britain at the age of 14 as a child refugee. He studied medicine at the University of Cambridge and works as a doctor in the NHS. He’s also a researcher and teaches at St George’s University of London. His poems have been published in Brittle Stars, Tears in the Fence, The Poetry Review, Under the Radar and Brixton Review of Books.