in parentheses

Aysha Mahmood is a Pakistani and Dominican-American writer and artist based in Connecticut. She is currently the editor of a nonprofit and her work has been published in Salamander and LEON Literary Review, amongst others. When not writing, Aysha binge-watches Bob Ross videos and eating an unhealthy amount of chocolate.

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To the honey bee that stung me:

I read that your kind only dies
a gruesome death when you pierce skin – is that right?
Is your lower abdomen ruptured?
Are your muscles twitching?
Did your glands explode?
Is there a gaping hole at the end of your abdomen?
Does it burn?
Does it ache?

I read that your kind only stings
when you feel your hive is being threatened – is that true?
Will they hail you a martyr?
Will they build you a memorial to honor your sacrifice?
Will they bow their heads when they mention your name?
I didn’t mean to put my hand near your hive.
Will you ever forgive me?
Will they?

I read that your kind only lives
for six weeks – that can’t be right, can it?
How many flowers have you danced with?
How much nectar have you chugged?
How much of the earth have you lived?
How much have you loved?
Are you thinking of your parents in these last moments?
Is there anything I can tell them?

Colonizer

Upon settling into our new home,
Husband called the exterminator.

We had no choice, he said.
You’re deathly allergic to bees. It was either you or them.

I didn’t even think about the massacre
until I went outside to meditate in our backyard.

You deserve to take up space, I repeated.
You deserve to take up space, I repeated.
You deserve to take up—

But what if my space invades the space of a bee?
who wishes no harm, who lives unprovoked,

who buzzes and hums and dances,
who diligently works to provide for their colony?

And if I’ve invaded the space of a bee, have I invaded the space of a bird?
Of a bush? Of a tree? Of a river? Of a—

Oh God, what kind of greedy am I
to take up a space that is home to another?

What kind of greedy am I
to declare myself the owner of it?

After a blizzard,

Father shovels the yard. He scoops the snow over his hunched back with breathless grunts until a patch of icy green grass appears. He pauses to lean over the shovel, clasping the shaft. There’s a reason the doctor told him to rest. Still, he bites off his glove and greets the ground with his palm to feel the pulse of the earth. Once he’s found the heartbeat, he scatters overpriced birdfeed over the illusion of fresh greenery. A bird swoops down on the edge of the patch. She knows the routine. She waits for Father to finish setting up the heated bird bath to call for the others who have been salivating nearby to join the feast. The birds devour, forgetting their shivers, remembering the spring beneath their feet. Father limps his way inside while Mother defrosts him with coffee beans. You’re going to get sick one of these days. Why do you keep doing this? Father looks outside. A baby sparrow scarfs a seed, its mother – a step behind – gazes at Father.
A sparrow’s life is two years short. Why shouldn’t I help guarantee one day?

New Year

I’m throwing out winter’s clumsiness. Words unsaid and words I wish I said and words that I did say that landed the wrong way that I’m now too embarrassed to apologize for. I’m kicking out the comparisons I make with people who are healthier than my disability and the people who aren’t healthier than my disability but have quote unquote done more. I’ll collect all of the “if only’s” in a jar and toss them into the river. I’ll tie the regrets down with rocks. May bubbles rise in their place popping me into the present. I’m sequestering the shame I feel when I cry, I’m shipping the embarrassment down the streams. I’m betraying capitalism. Turning my back on the big man’s persistence. Shutting down the screen. Nudging him away. Stopping the scrolls. Stripping the filter. Silencing the quick temper, donating it to a man, though I doubt he’ll need it, and speaking of men, I’m taking out the trash.

I’m introducing spring optimism. I’m greeting it with a glow. I’m making room for the activeness of a scraped knee and an elongated spine that tends to hunch during sun’s turn of the play. I’m inviting crying with tenderness. I’m feeding my appetite for worn books and allowing myself the bravery to annotate – not to ruin the art, but to enter into it my existence. I’m jumping into a palette of paint that stains my fingers. I’ll let it. I’m investing in small jingles of joy. The Trader Joe flowers. Egyptian cotton. Perfume on, without leaving the house. Christmas lights in June. The dress with the embroidered pink florals I bought that one time to wear on a special occasion – today is one. Warm and cozy. Soft silk. Sun’s bath. I’m surrounding my space with the friends who are poets – let their words stick to me – and the friends who don’t know they are poets – let their heartbeats sing. And I’m going to be giddy with greed. Because why is it so terrible to want and to want badly? To crave, to desire, connection and community and intimacy, and why is that such a sin to say I want more, to declare it, to speak it out with our full chest, to demand we are worthy of more, of more respect, of more peace, and to deeply crave the transformations, may we be more than our transactions. So I’ll hug wobbling mother and I’ll lather up patience for father and I’ll reach for more hands and I’ll send Steve the letter and kiss the seal with that lipstick he likes and I’ll actively listen to what my body says when it’s speaking and I’ll actively listen to what my body says when it’s silent. I’m moving into more love spilling it in my existence into my orbit into my people. I’m churching it into a prayer.

10 Moments Not Photographed At My Wedding:

1) The uneaten egg and cheese breakfast bagel, a cold and soggy mush my nerves refused to stomach.
2) The smudged fingerprints on the pearls mother gifted mother who gifted to me.
3) My right hand fidgeting against the tool of my dress as my inner child – still too scared to accept the love I deserve – debated fleeing.
4) The moment I decided to stay as I met the calm of my husband’s eyes.
5) My ex boyfriend, a man who swore we could never be friends and he could never move on, genuinely cheering in the crowd with his wife of three years.
6) My frantic search for my father as the DJ announced the father daughter dance, the same frantic search my eyes held during the fourth grade dance of the same name.
7) My brother-in-law making a toast about how love is everlasting while fussing with the ring on his finger, a ring he later sold for half its price.
8) My mother and father sitting at two separate tables.
9) The tick that bit my stomach while posing for photos and the Lyme disease that invaded my body, providing my husband the first opportunity to make good on his vows.
10) The warm whisper that left my husband’s lips and pirouetted into my ear when we were the last two people at the venue left, the stars above blushing at our next exchange.

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