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| Shagufta K Iqbal |
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Shagufta K Iqbal was born in Bristol; her parents are from Pakistan. She has been writing and performing since 2000. Shagufta’s poetry explores identity and gives voice to peoples individual and collective stories.
I Have Become the Third Person That I Will Be
I once came here when I was my first self.
Young.
She fell into the skies.
She was the cloud that swum across to places unknown.
She trusted the air.
He carried her across patchwork lands of gold,
and bright fields of rice stalks,
and reverberating grasses
that fought under the crushing of the sun.
He carried her over the waters of the Nair* ,
mountains that looked like timeless islands
in a sea of cloud, gathering snow .
But she travelled on
leaving behind the land of um** trees,
where she would climb to the foot of That Mountain Range
and eat bair*** ; her mouth would
open the vulnerable wet flesh of the red fruit.
I can taste them in her dreams.
But she is lost to us.
Her memory, a kiss;
bruised and blood stained onto the softness of my skull.
But today I shall start afresh.
Not like her daughter did.
Not like my second self did.
She feared.
She twisted and entwined.
She grew her roots in strange soil.
She is tree of life; indented with creeper vines,
stretch marks snuggled against her.
The thickness of her root anchoring her soul here.
She longs for something deeper
in the moist darkness of earth.
But she has no companion.
And grey veins of smoke suffocate the air.
No familiar Jasmine settles at her feet.
Here, she soaks up the constant murmur of rain.
The wetness releases an earthy smell;
that smell of loneliness.
And she holds on to mistrust,
its memory remains with her,
like bruises blood stained onto the softness of my skull.
But I am now my third self.
I am not of land.
I am not of sky.
I am an elusive nomad.
But I know no more than you do,
of the memory I will leave behind.
Only that I shed skins,
I leave behind ancestral tribes,
continents, gold bordered dresses
blood stained onto the softness of silk,
henna patterns resonant of tree limbs that
branch out against the restlessness of my hands.
I spill out into the world.
I feel it over my skin.
Like a great wave, it splashes over me and settles into my soul.
*River in the Punjab
**Mango
***Berry
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