Aysha Siddiqui

The Memories My Eyebrows Hold

I hold the tweezers to my face

Plucking at the unruly parts of me

Until I no longer see my mother's daughter

Have I no land, no home, no birthplace?

I see the glistening pools of sadness in my eyes

At least that is mine, indisputable, it reminds me of what I am

Even if I've forgotten. The hot stove burning, the whirring of a fan

Passing a window, pausing in a hall,

a fruit-seller yelling, below me a colorful stall,

The smell of citrus mangoes drifting in

The monotonous sounds of daily routine, so loud and unfamiliar

And oh, how different even the crows look here

Grounded in reality, forming a memory

But it's already fading, and I'm no longer in Pakistan

The window is closed, it's silent now

And I'm already forgetting

The smell of mangoes

The hot air on my face

My grandma's cooking

Again, the pools in my eyes, is that all I am? a pool to reflect

what stands in front of me, morphing into where I am,

Now I look more like my friends that look nothing like me,

I'm a mirror of empty memory

Looking down the bathroom sink at the plucked hairs, I pause

Then turn on the faucet and watch the swirling water erase what

was

The watermelon juice painting a trail down my chin

Dried by the sun glaring rays into my skin

Perched on the ground sifting through the dirt like memories

Watching the grass grow, the ladybugs crawl, I hear

The birds chirp and my heart thump making a wish

My tiny fingers grip blades of grass, ripping them out as I'm lifted up

Their roots in my hands they take hold and grow

Creating the lines on my palms, the faint hair on my arms

Now green is my favorite color and dirt brown is my skin

Creating the ground for things to take root

Now I'm closer to twenty than two

But I still crouch in the dirt watching things grow

The serious perch of my brow and dried juice on my face

Never fades just like the lines on my palm, the roots stay

These parts of me from when I was in the fork of my mother’s arms to the crouch of death's

embrace

Overturned rocks to indulge idle curiosity

Dirt underneath my nails and dirt on my knees

Summer haze and lazy daydreams

Clothes scraped from the trees I climb

And whispering wishes into the night

Desperately grasping at the branches of time

as they slip away and the sun beams above me blind

and I wish I could take flight

escape this downward spiral of lost dreams

And I grow taller but the branches grow farther

Until I’ve forgotten they exist

Author’s Biography

“Aysha Siddiqui is a young Pakistani American writer living near Seattle. Her writing is inspired by her culture, nature, and the people around her.”