When you go home tonight
& take all your clothes off in front
of the mirror let your body steam humid as
a teacup
let the traffic outside hum in
your ribcage hide & seek brake
lights intensifying adjacent to
muscle, terse
ruptures of sighs proclaim
an existing existence too occupied
by nerve
my dearest estranged fraction-
yield wholly
to earth pull stay hung as
a willow
over the yank & heat of skin bravely
gather slim runs of salt across belly
heave & hip swell
of thigh
a moth circles your torso wings splayed to
inhabit some bone knee crack
incessant walnut
empty out each polemic slap shut the
unbuckled husk these are yours
you can stare
all you want.
Momina Mela is a Pakistani poet from Lahore. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Horse Less Review, The Blueshift Journal and The Lighthouse Journal amongst others. She serves as the Poetry Editor for Papercuts, a publication run by Desi Writers’ Lounge. She holds a BA (Hons) degree in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London. She will begin her MFA in poetry at NYU in the fall of 2016 as a full scholarship recipient.