My Father - Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in

white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits

out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands

overflowed with good deeds.

Beauty - Warsan Shire

My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair

a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole

the neighbour's husband, burnt his name into her skin.

For weeks she smelt of cheap perfume and dying flesh.

It's 4 a.m. and she winks at me, bending over the sink,

her small breasts bruised from sucking.

She smiles, pops her gum before saying

boys are haram, don't ever forget that.

Some nights I hear her in her room screaming.

We play Surah Al-Baqarah to drown her out.

Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.

Our mother has banned her from saying God's name.

Transmutation - Gael Turnbull

It was as if she couldn’t know herself. Only other persons could

do that. When she searched for her image, there was always the

reminder: one green eye, one brown. Her mother had tried to

reassure that it made her attractive, interesting, that it was an asset,

not a defect

which wasn’t what troubled, or even the lack of symmetry, but that

when she looked in the mirror, she was always reversed, with her

green eye on the left, her brown on the right. Only others saw her

as she was. Only others might make the affirmation, ‘You are’. For

her, it was always the reflection, ‘Am I?’

Downhill - Julia Vinograd

I don’t have a home

and I live there

all the time.

"It hurt when I found out she dug her lies more than my truth" - Henry Rollins

It hurt when I found out she dug her lies more than my truth

It hurt when she finally broke down and saw the real thing

She was so let down

She felt like she had been ripped off

My truth incinerated her lies

I asked her if she loved me

She said that I wasn't the person she thought she knew

I told her I was right here

I was a lie to her lie

I let her down

I couldn't feel bad for being myself

It hurts to think that when we were looking into each other's eyes

We were looking at strangers we thought we knew so well

"I'm in the hot room again" - Henry Rollins

I'm in the hot room again

I am a time junkie

I am a user

Like all addicts, I come to the point where I ask myself

Who's using who

I take a look around and I see what I do

I look in the mirror and I see what it's doing to me

And I come to the conclusion that we got a pretty good thing going