Directions

by Aysha Mahmood

Directions

Cling to me. Now, coil and squeeze, claw out my muscles,
crunch out my bones, carve your name into my femur, dig
your teeth deep into my thigh, make my skin sweat, foam
at the mouth, growl and howl and devour – be rabid about it –
rip out my nerves and swallow me whole, splash me down
your throat, bathe me in your bile, vomit me out with a dense
liquid foam, boil what’s left of me and freeze my cells, thaw me
out with the tip of your tongue and a hushed breath that whispers,
“I’m in love with you.”

Poet Aysha Mahmood is a Pakistani and Dominican writer based in Connecticut. She is currently the editor of a nonprofit organization, and her creative writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in Salamander, Leon Literary Review, Paddler Press, Unstamatic, and Troublemaker Firestarter.

Artist Simon Beraud lives and works between Paris, Brussels and Tel Aviv. His work revolves around questions intrinsic to human existence: identity, roots and uprooting, borders, love. and solitude, memory… Through his images, he invites the viewer to find connections with these questions that drive him. More broadly, he is interested in the evolution of our perceptions and of a collective memory: in the impact of the environment on the psyche and of the psyche on the environment.