My life tells me she wants me, each day, to bring her fresh flowers plucked from my
throat. I’m beginning to give myself this     gift of decision – the year shall be one

of rescue. My body was built for love, the spring sun tips its cup into my mouth.
Now in Lahore, my body a conduit for grace, I remain haunted by other cities.

The ghosts are me, the ghosts are me but not now. I live distributed in memory
in moment. The words I carry across the river mistake me for an old friend

vivifying me. My suns are crossed. It took me a year to forget London
by heart – now I am convinced London only lives     when I am there to see it.

I have trouble holding things these days; the glass of the broken pepper mill sliced
clean through several layers of skin so that my thumb now opens like a book.

So steady the hand that carries the blade that carries the sentence forged
in the jaws of silence. I drive everyday now, consenting to this union with machine

as I lower myself onto the city’s legs. At night, I carry my grief lovingly to our bed.
Long ago, this city will have sucked me dry. I still sweat as if embraced by Karachi

but always I am embraced by what I see as Karachi     in Karachi.
Fearing the day there’ll be nothing to drink but saltwater and music,

my lips crack and split open over whispers of old prayers.
So settled, sorrow’s most jagged tooth in the borrowed shoulder of song.

The year is a year of rescue. It is spring and not yet spring – I have waited. Flat
like layers of tyre on the road, I am levelled by the city’s presumption of my survival.