"Most days, it is my stomach that takes the hit for my love, but I am too busy apologising to my..."

“Most days, it is my stomach that takes the hit for my love, but I am too busy apologising to my heart for all the times I have made it feel like a dog on a leash. The couple in the flat above me are arguing like crows over food. They turn their home into a public place, they turn their home into a court room where no one is the judge except for the furniture. He throws plates at the wall and she looks at him and remembers that he loved her once. He looks at her and thinks of all the ways a body can change. They both stay because they don’t know how not to. I sit a floor beneath them and think about water and think about my stomach and the things I have put it through for love. The last heartbreak was a sea flooding my lungs. The last heartbreak looked like a lone bible sitting on the floor of a burning church. A man prays for forgiveness in the middle of a war-zone, his eyebrows are on fire. God is listening through the space between two buildings but the man does not know he is there and he stays on his knees. This is either stupid or it is brave, either way, I want it. I am looking for calm like this, for love like this. My devotion takes more space than my body can warrant, my devotion is flammable and everything I touch becomes a forest fire that leaves scorch marks at the bottom of my stomach. I am sorry for my body, I am sorry that I have filled it with other people and forgotten to leave space for myself. I am sorry for all the howling nights that my love felt like a fist closed around the carnival of my insides. All the performers have left, and the place is in havoc. The lights are off and the lions are pawing at the ground and roaring. They are looking for something to eat. Soon they will start on me. I think about my stomach, I tell him that I love him, he tells me that this is too much and I apologise to my heart again for the fallout. I wonder if morticians prefer dead bodies because when you tell them ‘I love you’ their silence sounds like ‘I love you too’. Funeral homes are littered with people like this. They are talking to the dead and are thankful that the dead cannot talk back.”

- Azra.T “Love song for my stomach and the wars it has eaten”