Tomorrow will answer today's questions — Poems by Khatija Khan

Tomorrow will answer today's questions

I stumbled upon my old doll today.

Wiping the dust off her

glossy buttoned eyes and caressing

the cotton oozing out

of her torn hand, I said,

"You've changed a lot".

She might have wanted to say it back.

She might have wanted to ask me

if I still guard my oversensitive

heart from my own self,

if my mother's trauma and

my father's anger still sit

on my face perfectly,

if guilt is a crumpled organ

inside my belly,

if inheritance is the

ugliest thing to ever exist,

if worry beats like a second heart

in my chest,

if I miss the girl I have once been.

Pity bubbled my eyes.

I cleaned her up and stitched

her skin well. I combed her

woollen hair and recalled

the days I cried my heart out

on her shoulders and

sang her lullabies to sleep.

I revisited the days of milk moustaches

on her upper lips when I

made her drink from my glass.

Now she sits at

the corner of my couch.

Tomorrow she will have all her answers

when my daughter returns

from her school trip

-hopping like a kangaroo,

filling the room with innocent giggles,

carrying her mother's smile and

her father's gentleness,

when inheritance turns out

to be the prettiest thing to

ever exist,

when there is love and only love

in every spine and bone,

when I kiss my old photographs

without feeling guilty.

Guilt is a Crumpled Organ

Guilt is a crumpled organ

inside my mother.

Inside my father,

it beats like a second heart.

I knitted my hope under my

mother's feet,

and now I am dissolving.

She says, "Humans are nothing but

convenience stores of guilt.

We share it and it multiplies."

Like a parasite, I always cling to her

waiting to engross myself into

poetry and optimism instead of

pressure cookers and Chinese saucers.

She has taught me that I should not be

a woman like her

because I want to tell my daughter

that- humans are nothing but

patties of kindness sandwiched

in buns of warmth. We share it

and it multiplies.

My father asks us to smile for pictures

even if we shed rivulets of regret in reality.

Our dinner table conversations end

up in massacres of hope.

There has never been blood but

we're covered in disguise from head to toe.

We break ourselves to save the cups.

We cry enough but never miss

onions for salad.

His childhood is a foggy memory for him.

He might have felt guilty for being

the person he is, as a child.

But who will tell him how I feel guilty

for being the person I am, as an adult?

How do I change the narrative

when all I am is silence?

Grandmother visits me in poetry

My grandmother's poetry

percolates through the knuckles

of loneliness

and teaches me to break free

and migrate

to places no train can reach.

Days when the sunlight doesn't

knit its forehead into the windows

of those dying out of darkness,

there are cotton swabs sitting

unnoticed, ready to wipe

teary eyes and paint a language

which has no word for grief

but pools of happiness ready to soak

everything in them.

"I have known people

who live as softly as

a bud opens to bloom into a flower,

who love as gently as the fireflies

decorate the night sky,

who move as kindly as the wind does,

carrying pollen particles away

with itself,

who quiver the way a caterpillar

does within its cocoon and comes

out as a tiny butterfly.

I have decided to be one of them.

My love language is to pour

forgiveness over everyone who

couldn't love me the way I deserved.

I do not want to hate life

more than I love myself.

I will not wait for peace.

I will become its synonym.

The sky must surrender

now that I have finally grown wings."

- the last entry from her

treasured journal reads.

Dear Grandma, the only branch

that connects two trees of

generational gap is that of pain.

You have turned it into poetry.

Now your words are preserved

deep into the soil of my soul

and whenever I will write,

our lives will sprout side by side

and you will be immortalized.

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About the Poet:

Khatija Khan turns to poetry when the world feels overwhelming. She finds joy in the simple pleasures of life—books, quiet evenings, and a love for ice cream.