Maps
“Where are you really from?” he asked, “Originally.”
“The past,” I say, after a long pause and a deep breath
Isn’t time an equal axis to physical space?
A cuckoo clock that ticks on with every breath
Space is fine, but with maps I must contest
Sketched by white men, as others held their breath
When all is said and done, I belong neither here nor there
“Citizen of the world,” they say, but to me, “just a citizen of breath.”
Why feel this angst, Ahsan, over unrequited infatuation with the West?
Given time and space, they’ll take everything
— even your breath.
§
– Ahsan Ashraf was born in Lahore and moved to the US for college, recently having crossed the invisible boundary where his years there are now equal to those spent in Pakistan. A physicist by training and a data scientist by profession, he navigates the space between numbers and stories. By day, he teaches machines to think; by night, he finds meaning in the unpredictability of poetry. He believes in the power and fragility of language and poetry – how it can illuminate, distort, and reshape the world.
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