Fume.

Sahar Muradi

she/her

It burns. Just under. Just behind. Ledge of pleasant teeth. Smile for your Boss. Fire. For your Children. Fire. Your poor, unassuming Partner. Inferno.

The clockwork. Of sloughing oneself. In service. All the day. Then night. 8:30pm. Breath and death. Two letters apart.

The capital. Of sloughing oneself. In servitude. All the day. Suddenly 46. 86.

Nix.

You lost the other blaze. Somewhere. In his eyes. The placenta. The pat on the back.

The news. Not being new. Never again. Never the case.

You lost your way. Faith. Desire hardened. Language abdicated.

Why even poetry. Why even. Why did you bring them. Into the inferno.

You dream about the flame. Leaving with it. Diving. Disappearing. You have disappeared.

Keep a perimeter. Keep quiet. Don’t splay. The one that doesn’t splay. Isn’t. Is not. Alive. Relevant.

Small being. Being small. Time being. Big. Elusive. Ungraspable. Unslakable. The thirst.

There wasn’t enough. There isn’t any. To spare. To make. To replenish. The lost.

What did you do. With yours. Your you. Your you lower-cased. Where is your. What is your Capital. Being.

Sahar Muradi is author of the collection OCTOBERS, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2022 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is author of the chapbook [ G A T E S ], the hybrid memoir Ask Hafiz (winner of the 2021 Patrons’ Prize for

Emerging Artists from Thornwillow Press), and the chaplet A Garden Beyond My Hand. She is

co-editor, with Seelai Karzai, of EMERGENC(Y): Writing Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War, An Anthology of Writing from Afghanistan and its Diaspora; and, with Zohra Saed, of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature. Sahar’s writing has been supported by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Bethany Arts Community, Blue Mountain Center, Kundiman, and WOC Writers. She is co-founder of the Afghan American Artists & Writers Association, directs the arts education programs at City Lore, and dearly believes in the bottom of the rice pot. saharmuradi.com