Two Poems

Waniya Aks E Noor

A shooting star tore through

Lahore’s smoggy horizon.

You covered your eyes,

to save your superstitious soul.

I looked at it in your stead—

pilfered your superstition

with my charred hands,

ceded the burning wish to you.

A grey-white fledgling

feeding on orange marigolds,

in the window beside my sobbing father.

The doctors fixed my legs,

couldn't do anything about my spine.

Asked what I'd do with a boneless life,

I looked to the marigolds and said:

Eat chocolate cake,

and break my back dreaming again.

Waniya Aks E Noor is a writer from Lahore, Pakistan. She likes vanilla caramel crunch cake and River Phoenix. That's it. That's the bio.