Asra Jafarey provides a visual guide to her poem ‘on the colour lilac’ which you can read in issue 9.
My poem is a collection of musings. Sometimes literal, sometimes figurative, most of the time; both. The bags under my mother’s eyes,
the sky at maghreb (where the sun sets) as my father offers his prayers,
a parting gift from an old friend, mulberries in Skardu (a city in Gilgit Baltistan, North of Pakistan),
my best friend leaving a tooth brush (even though it’s green and blue, the light was purple and it gave me a feeling of security)
To me, those two things are synonymous because ‘on the colour lilac’ was the first poem I ever truly felt proud of,
I wrote to an old friend who then gave me a lilac dulai (a thin blanket, similiar to a throw).
To me, Lilac is discursive, it is finding your way back and seeing it differently, like a meeting with fate, like a meeting with faith. Sometimes it is misfortune, and other times it is nostalgia. But all the time, it is felt.
this was a unique reading…loved the lilac undertones!