from the point of view of an 11 year old

whilst the bliss of adolescent dreams and hopes was everyone else’s heart’s desire,

for me, the air felt mellow like a steamed window after a hot bath and

the memories of both my grand-fathers leaving me haunted the passageway,

starting secondary school on the other side of the city,

playing with lilac muscat boiled sweets in an old red tin,

hosting talent shows outside the football cages,

rushing humid tsunami chokehold,

finishing reading the qur’an again, the swiss miss of life,

the bittersweetness of the olympics, trying out abseiling and scraping my knee,

discovering my favourite colour is yellow, memorising surah yaseen,

riding bikes with my friends going out to eat with them too, getting a hamster,

florescent pink 12th birthday cake candles melting into the sticky frosting

paired with the constant change in music taste

but i so badly needed everything to pause.

a chance to go back home

before i turned thirteen

to experience my life softly before the chaos,

before they left me unexpectedly.

By Aniqah Bashir