Neha Maqsood: 2 Poems

her childhood bedroom

a casino of speckled memories vehemently
spurning cremation. the childhood bedroom
where dreams and a moment of adulation were dreamt off. the
underground pool burnt to ashes, nest twigs atop spotlights, 
shining into the cemented darkness. this home is not a home
anymore. tis a cloud of dust, blowing silently with the wind,
stuck in origin, holding my spot.
a delicate girl, her skin.

the pink black-out

that falling, pink blur primed you
for the culminating dive into the light –
an unwarranted misbehaviour of 
heart fluttering in misplaced symphony,
stumbling over the refrain with 
the blue abyss of the sky melting into the
cyanotic blue of hospital walls, surgical caps and your miscarried
daughter’s nursery.
no longer having the certainty of 
a systole which never, ever delays its diastole! extract
your heart out; nail it to the scaffolding for the world
to see.
for i danced in the theatre and have seen what the heart can do,
the ways it can fail, from the 
snapping of my ribs to the clutter of an unborn child’s crib. 
from the untimeliness of life to the tardiness of my beating.
glug morphine and tend to exes; give
myself a lobotomy and arrange the skeleton in my closet. 
unsceptred chambers, muscles like hung clouds
and masked heads. 
i hear 
they call it a broken heart.

Neha Maqsood is a journalist who has written for multiple publications ranging from but not limited to, The Tempest, Media Diversified, Brown Girl Magazine, Rife Magazine and The Uni Bubble. Her poetry has been featured in honey & lime, Turnpike Magazine, That’s What She Said and Vampcat Mag. For her efforts in tackling discrimination against people of colour and increasing South Asian representation in Britain, she was listed as the 100 Most Influential BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) people in South-West England and was nominated for a UK National Diversity Award under Race, Faith and Religion. She also starred in the 2018 film, Sisters in Arms, which premiered at multiple international film festivals in Toronto, Los Angeles, London, Kerry and Dingle.