The dust is orange enough to be beautiful.
She tells herself she is scrubbing out sunshine
when the dust spills out of her hair under shower water.
The air holds itself smooth,
curves up like a ripe, promising mango.
Remarkable- the color of the sky is gentle enough
to set even the crows dreaming.
When she walks home,
she counts the number of people
who share features with her.
Her grandmother once told her
the ocean and the sky were brothers,
same disposition, made for the same purpose,
God smiled, grabbed the biggest paintbrush he could find,
painted BLUE.
At night, an orchestra assembles
below her bedroom window.
In the key of listlessness, the
insects play their hearts out.
She wanders at night. Lahore looks
at her with one heavy-lidded eye,
huffs a deep puff of air, rolls over,
falls back asleep,
snoring giant.
"In Lahore, Pakistan" explores the feeling of being enchanted by the beauty of a country around you, but also feeling disconnected from it. I wrote this, thinking about how I felt when I went to Pakistan for the first time.
Biography:
Kiran Masroor is a sophomore at Yale University where she’s majoring in Neuroscience. On campus, she is in the performance group, TEETH Slam Poets, and she greatly enjoys writing about her Pakistani culture. ​​​​​​​She also runs a poetry account where she explores the intersection of written word, musical, and visual arts (@poemsbykiran).