YPERITE (MUSTARD GAS)
- Mar 7
- 1 min read
By Roxana Shirazi
It’s the mustard gas that has made me
The way I am, my love.
No garlic, mustard or horseradish smell,
I got seduced by the odourless pure type,
It’s not my fault.
It’s the days of sitting in the honey silence
With cherry-patterned skirts cuddling my little knees
Waiting for all the boys to notice me that has made me
The way I am, my friend.
Yperite bleeding through the Persian dusk.
Contaminating/poisoning/dirtying.
It’s the bad uncle holding my five year old tender white meat
In the palm of his hand that has turned me
Into this whore, my soulmate.
Still, you bring me Coco Chanel and fine cottons from Milan
To cure me.
Still, I don’t change.
I am a counterfeit retard,
The worst kind.
It’s my daddy, the trauma of war, my bad childhood, the bullying, the neighbour’s dog bite, the beatings, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker…
It’s everything but me.
And still I sit here quietly on the tour bus
With his sperm running down my thigh.