give me food, give me soul

Maham Insha is a 19 year old from Karachi, Pakistan who is a soon-to-be Social Development and Policy student. She runs a personal blog by her name, is a musician and songwriter and works part time as a musician at an educational startup. She loves indulging in amateur pottery, going on long walks, obsessively organizing her life by making colorful Google doc spreadsheets, reading books about people who want to be poets, and doing her skincare and self-care routine while jamming out to Marilyn Manson. 

This is her poem, Give Me Food, Give Me Soul:

Nourishment:

It comes from a spoonful of golden honey I indulge in every single morning.

It coats my tongue and I remember bronze and brazen sunsets at the beach

Golden sand

Liquid gold water

Pink sky

A syrupy smell, a syrupy daze.

It comes from turmeric tea

A meditation on its own

As it simmers down to create sunshine milk

That gives you a sunshine state of mind,

Add cinnamon or honey as you please.

It comes from plump black olives on your Mediterranean bread

I can hear the roaring wind rustling the mango tree leaves outside

I look over my shoulder to watch them through the kitchen window

Dancing and flirting with the breeze

Is it the salsa or the tango?

Slather on the herbed feta cheese over the soft olive bed

Smell the sundried tomatoes

Nature’s music indulges me further as I savor the pieces I tear off with my fingers

One by one.

It comes from lychees

The blushing red skin holds

The trickling of a waterfall in one bite

Crystal water

Blue skies

tangy, supple flesh that comes entangled with withering moss coloured leaves

It’s clarity in a bite.

In my head I create a vision

Of my dusky coloured self with other dusky coloured selves

Strewn across a room, sunlight dancing on the walls

There is a thick, ripe flavor that simmers through the air

We sip turmeric tea, eat spoonfuls of honey, tear off pieces of meditteranean bread with our fingers and lick the juices of the lychee fruit off our wrists

A Tuesday afternoon.

Maham's current faves:

  Hosting gatherings, wearing tube tops, making lists, watching SUITS, the color lilac, photo categorizing, planning trips, pages from a vintage botany book(that belonged to her mom and that she is now getting framed for her room, sea salt spray, cucumbers drizzled with lemon, cardio classes, Greenback Boogie by Ima Robot, Clinique mascara, people watching, collecting bottles, making and painting pottery, Indian and Pakistani thrillers, gold chains, book binding.