I crossed the ovarian bridge of
my mother’s impoverished womb,
seeking asylum from its hostile darkness;
and they received me at the
umbilical border as an infant refugee
just as I had hoped.
They gave me a job and an education;
you’re the Olympian sperm, a book read
and I chuckled, for where does a sperm survive
I wondered ― on the barren earth or
the deepening sea.
Lopsided from a suicide bridge
I peered into the liquid abyss,
the plunge in mid-air my passage
back to my mother’s womb ―
this time not as an Olympian sperm
but a regular one.
Ahsan Yousaf is a writer hailing from the city of rowdy-rickshaws and suffocating, tightly-knit streets—Rawalpindi. He holds a firm conviction that every person has a wealth of natural emotion buried within him, begging to be mined and hauled to the nearest digital typewriter. He is the author of the novel “The Devil’s Hour” which has been endorsed by Dasstan, a publication based in Islamabad—Rawalpindi’s adjoining, wealthier twin. He lives alone, under a self-imposed house sentence that limits his interactions with the outside world to a few hours.
Photo by Willow Loveday Little
