Mad Girl’s Delirium
I wake up & check my pulse
to see if I’m still alive. There’s
all this talk about war and disease
and suffering, it’s spring now, but
I feel so cold. I cut my Baba’s
pomegranates, wince as the juice throbs
in my papercuts, feed the extra seeds to
my mother’s koi. Baba packs his Iranian art
away into a suitcase, I’ll never see it again.
I drop my sleeping pills in the crack between
the wall and bed, scrape my fingers against
the wooden frame. God, I just can’t sleep.
Knee-deep and alone in my mother’s pond—
algae hair burning, the water only a brief relief.
Too quiet, too still, I fall back and listen the crackle
of suffocated flames. I dream of arson to my
childhood home, pretend it’s an act of erasure.
I tug at my little nightgown, the wool heavy
under the night sky. I don’t feel lonely here,
floating with the koi. Frozen fingers caressing
the neck, feel the thrum—I’m still alive.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi’s work has appeared in Into the Void Magazine, Corvid Queen, and cahoodaloodaling, among others. She is a poetry reader at Mud Season Review, attended the International Writing Program’s Summer Institute, and was a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. She can be found at ashleyhajimirsadeghi.squarespace.com.