is joy

Munira Tabassum Ahmed

& I am at a rest stop
four hours from my hometown.
this is the closest I’ll get
to girlhood before I turn to
dust & dusk & soft water,
because what is a girl if not
the hollow word for something
you’ve always known?
roadside: I try to pry open the cavity
in my chest & listen to each organ,
amma says it's polyphonic.
once, on a night smaller than
this one, she handed me a spare knife
& started to cut out the weeds
along the pavement. we sat there,
moving low & sweet & happy.
because what is happy if not
being & being & being together?
amma said the sky was whole.
tonight, it looks open.
I stretch along the blade,
call it my empire, keen &
holy. it doesn’t cut well anymore,
but it still holds love and motion.
I drive a little further, closer
to the aperture my girlhood
left behind: I turn into soft water.
it is worth it.

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Munira Tabassum Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-Australian writer and performer. Her work is featured in The Lifted Brow, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Emerging Writers Festival, Runway Journal, and elsewhere.

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