Marinated In Sepia

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Marinated In Sepia

The memory of innocence nags me

like lost keys and catchy headlines half-read,

wrenches me back like taps and stoves left on.

Bring back a sturdy, leafless tree, it cries

with branches like claws turned upward to catch

yourself as you fall from the sky.

Marinated in sepia, the three

intertwined demons of pain, shame, and dread

rake across my heart and pierce my soul. Born

whole but sliced by the unknown, child-me tries

once more to gather stray how-tos and match

its wits against the world; and I -

I must watch it fail again.

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Pleiades, Miracle Monocle, Glassworks, Windsor Review, Moria, CommuterLit, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.

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