Sunnah Khan

Immigrant Poem 1.

Red dust marks the lines on your face where your tears drew a route out

Of your village where nothing grows

the earth cracks and shifts

Creating new borders

New lines to cross

And cross out

Make a path through the rubble

To your ma jee’s house

drawn homeward by the nostrils

Mango peel and cumin seeds sweating on the hot earth roof

Press memory like paan

under your tongue

The water in the well has dried up

the stain glass window

Where you first learnt

to touch colour

Is cracked

Light bounces red and blue

Makes everything appear broken

by blood

divided by ocean

Immigrant Poem 2.

It’s a funny thing to imagine

That we carry the memories of struggle in our pyche

That trauma alters our DNA

Bares fruit in our children

a certain glaze in the eyes

Reflecting light

Retracting

Back through our bones

Back to the place where hope and pain was born

Where you ripped up a home

And replaced it with a journey

Sunnah Khan is Scottish Pakistani living in East London writing poems of belonging & displacement.