every poem is a love poem

Munira Tabassum Ahmed

i am told that every man eventually turns into a river,

and i don’t care too much. blue is the most grateful colour
anyway. i tell myself that i, barely a body,

would never become a body of water. if i did,
i’d flow soft, never burying the silt soil around me.

i watch a boy, chasing a magpie with all his teeth as if
it was a lion. he falls into the bushes and decorates himself

with blue plumbagos. stupid boy. he brushes off the ones he sees.
did i get them all? there are a few stuck in his too-thick hair, but

yeah, you did. they add some colour.
he runs off, the blue is in my hand now.

stupid girl. i start moving silt soil.

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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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