& already you’d lost your sense of time. We sat in the dark, curtains drawn,
all day watching pirated melodramas with Turkish subtitles. Outside
the world continued on, kids looking for excuses to blast reggae & rap &
indie songs on max as they drove past. They called this heaven, the place where
we no longer learned to survive & be good. Say you love me, we’d all shout
out of sync at the top of our lungs, all or nothing. Before the depression,
we ate expired discount ramen for breakfast every day, plucked the petals
off wilted sunflowers lining the path to the karaoke bar, pressed them
in-between our out-of-focus polaroids. Go ahead & call me lovesick,
nostalgic for a time that often felt like it was the end of the world.
At least then we’d all go to heaven–I know it’s real somewhere. God,
I hated church, as it felt like I had to earn something I didn’t deserve.
Looked for excuses in every hymn, transformed them into poems where every
time I got the last word in. All we do now is sit in silence as the world
moves on. Have you ever felt so small that if you curled in on yourself,
you felt like you’d disappear? Once, as we sat by the lake, away from
tourists & toddlers splashing in kiddie pools, you said to me you thought all
of this was real.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia writer, artist, and journalist born, raised, and writing in Baltimore, MD. Her creative writing has appeared in Passages North, The Cortland Review, Salamander, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Journal, among others. Her work is the recipient of awards and support from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Fulbright Program, U.S. State Department, Brooklyn Poets, and the University of Arizona. She received her M.A. in Global Humanities from Towson University and B.S. in International Trade from the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Website: www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com
Instagram: @nassarine
Image credit: Alexander Wright