wading through this hour, blue
call for rehearsal, your blue-

berry yoghurt left half-eaten on my
heart and i slur, only once in a blue 

moon do we braid ourselves around
one another like star jasmines dipped in blue

ink that you said you’d leave
on my shoulder after the blue

clouds billowing around my loose tongue
dispelled in the heat of this blue

calcutta june and i had trusted that we’d fuck
this up too, just like that time when your blue

-lipped kiss landed on the leeward side of your
mountain, what was its name, that blue

-capped glory, bruising violet under my eyes and
you’d leave me, like God forges men in blue

winters before they are called fathers but you
strummed your fingers and left me blue

-lidded, the other half of you the ocean
licking me clean, precious, sunlit blue.


Sarah Aziz is a poet, journalist, translator and illustrator based in Kolkata, India. She is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Literature at Loreto College, University of Calcutta. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Voice of America, Mantis (a Journal of Poetry, Criticism & Translation housed at Stanford University) and Stanchion Zine, among others.