Somewhere inside the deep beyond

Sits my life-sized, pint-sized sparrow home.

There, lives my quiet, burned and scorned

And words of sanctum flow unatoned.

Amidst the turgid stumps of trees,

The path is darker farther in.

Vision swarmed with corpses that bleed

And deafened by what lives therein.

Skies darken with a holy smoke

That seeps into my nose and lungs.

My sparrow home now wears a cloak

Coaxing me close in foreign tongues.

I want to hear its muffled words

And speak to all the folk that lurk.

But sound, it leaks of screeching birds

And echoes from the nearest cirque.

So far I am, from what could be mine

Yet there it stands, a perfect crime.

Frayed are my feet, twisted, my spine.

The forest having stripped my prime.

I wear away yet still I roam,

In search of empty promises

Brewed and grown from there within

My narrow, sparrow, little home.

Syeda Erum Noor is dangerously oblivious and has no sense of time. Send help at erum.noor1998@gmail.com