Aster Lit: Florescence
Issue 5—Spring 2022
offering
Lina Sawyer, Turkey
the woman breaks my jaw in two & asks if i’m alright. i say yes, yes please: i would like to fall apart in your hands, no — i do not want a moment, i don’t need any water either. yes, my heart’s a bit wobbly but i’ll be fine. she looks at my mother, writes out instructions on how to take care of my human mouth. she asks if i smoke & answers of course not, you’re too scared. my mother in the driver’s seat — says patience & faith will take away the pain. i try to say i’m very sorry but my mouth stays closed, and with my eyes open, i become
the sacrificed lamb
of abraham.
i take photos of my blood to bear witness to a rebirth,
i, the spring queen, have been robbed of my earth.
i throw up in the car, faint in the driveway, they call a hazy boy to carry me to my room
& he stays.
i reek of sickening decay, of spoiled honey, yet licking the sympathy off a poor boy’s mouth, i am reborn.
Lina Sawyer, Turkey
there i am, at two thirty at night, with a tangerine in my head, y’know, watching a movie. i can hear the washing machine next door and it pisses me the hell off but if the movie is good i can’t hear it anymore. i’ve been looking at this tangerine for sixteen minutes and eleven seconds. it looks alright, other than the black bruise it has on its head. which way is a tangerine’s head? it’s on one of the ends, y’know, and i’m looking at it and my mouth hurts. i peel the skin just a bit to see if it’s legit, y’know, a real one. cause sometimes you peel it off and it’s not.
if i carve out its seeds and let them go it’ll go and make more of itself, the tangerine. i feel good about that, the power i have. but i hold it in my hand until i’m sleepy and i keep holding it, until i realize that i will not eat this tangerine cause i am afraid it’s sour, or bitter, or both. but i can’t let it go either.
so now it’s doing a show, in my hand, and it has the power. and it’s tossing and turning or i’m tossing and turning, trying to find something human in me.
i’m still learning y’know, what it takes, to let people have this body. and i look at it once more, now as the sun’s coming out and the walls are painted in the color of my tangerine
and my hands are painted too
and it still looks the same,
half-peeled, slow and determined,
standing its ground,
and i squeeze it and it doesn’t go away, or get smaller. it spills on my hands, and it stays there, as if to say, there’ll always be more of it, as if to say, any kind of love that is frowned upon, is bound to draw people in.
Lina Sawyer is a Middle Eastern poet, they enjoy writing poetry both in their native language and in English. Their work has been published in Sunday Mornings at the River Autumn 2021 Anthology. Outside of writing, they enjoy playing the piano and violin.