Against Translation
A meditation on language and belonging, exploring the intimacy a mother tongue holds and the warmth quietly forfeited when feeling is carried into another.
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Red Ink
A study of complicity and institutional language, examining guilt, responsibility, and the quiet violence contained in wording chosen to keep everything tidy.
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Sparrow
A prose poem examining childhood trauma, dissociation and learned control, revealing how love, fear and innocence can become dangerously entangled in one body.
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Rafu
A tender reflection on caregiving, ageing and repair, exploring how devotion is stitched into daily labour, and who is left to hold a story once it is finished.
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The Geography of Empathy
An examination of how society divides human suffering, setting daily comfort against distant, normalised conflict and the way tragedy is made to feel invisible.
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مردانہ کمزوری
A searching story about masculinity and expectation, tracing burdens set on a boy long before he could meet them, and what our idea of manhood quietly costs him.
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Evocation
A profound meditation on love, loss, and devotion, blending grief with reverence as it reflects on memory, longing, and the sacredness found in what remains.
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In the Name of Love
An unflinching look at inherited violence, exploring how harm passes silently between generations and how a home can become the blueprint for the pain that follows.
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Stitch
An exploration of hunger, institutional care and the language of accounting, examining how need is measured, recorded, and never once called by its proper name.
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The Weight of the Turban
An exposure of hypocrisy, corruption and the abuse of religious power, examining how greed and harm shelter behind holy words, and what breaking the cycle costs.
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Good girls don’t stare at their own thighs.
An emotional, lyrical dive into longing and identity, tracing the quiet struggle between internalised guilt and the freedom to feel without fear or apology.
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Inheritance
A study of the silence between a mother and daughter, exploring shame, distance and the questions a household is built to keep from ever being asked aloud.
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650/650
A reflection on self-editing and performance, exploring how a life is compressed into acceptable language, and what is quietly abandoned to make the story fit.
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Home
An unsentimental reckoning with domestic life, examining safety, concealment and the difficult truth that a home can be the first place one learns to leave.
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Permit Me Not
A contemplative meditation on longing, Permit Me Not by Abdullah Ali Khan traces the tension between desire and restraint, where love becomes both a solace and a burden.
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Days
A quiet sequence on family, absence and the unsaid, examining how care and resentment are set out together, and how much a shared table can be made to hold.
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Gudiya
An exploration of motherhood, memory and emotional fragility, delving into the quiet tensions of domestic life, care, and the complexities of mental wellbeing.
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Beholder of the Oyster
A tender study of intimacy and attention, exploring the small, unspoken observations that pass between people and the tenderness of being closely looked at.
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Bhalo Bashen
A reflection on kinship, belonging and class, asking who is permitted to be called family when borders, paperwork and long devotion all refuse to agree.
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The Pig Won’t Dance
An examination of exile, motherhood and estrangement, exploring how a place can remake a family, and what remains unspeakable between a mother and daughter.
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there once was a farmer
A nursery rhyme turned inward, exploring loneliness, futile labour and the ache of wondering whether anything one has grown would still know its maker.
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The Work Hair Does
An essay on hair as emotional autobiography, exploring cultural codes, gender norms and class divides, and revealing hair as diagnostic rather than decorative.
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A Bag of Words
An exploration of inheritance and womanhood, examining the burdens handed down from mother to daughter and the small mercies that make them possible to carry.
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What’s a Plus?
A spare study of deception and denial, exploring how a single unanswered question can hold more weight than confrontation, and what honesty is finally worth.
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وہ گھر جس نے سرگوشیاں کرنا سیکھ لیا
A quiet study of decline and attention, exploring how a household registers loss before anyone will name it, and the distance that grows inside familiar rooms.
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The Watch
A study of inherited silence between fathers and sons, exploring restraint, tenderness withheld, and the objects that come to stand in for what was never said.
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My mother buys vegetables at a roadside stall
A subtle reflection on love, memory, and the weight of small, unspoken gestures, revealing how everyday moments quietly shape the connections that linger in our lives.
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Lawn Fever
An exploration of displacement, cultural reclamation and maternal bonds, read through Pakistan's luxury fabric obsession and the small victories found in upheaval.
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The Cycle Repeats
An exploration of arranged marriage, tradition and expectation, tracing the quiet tensions and the subtle dissonance between appearances and inner life.
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“Rat”
An unsettling meditation on intrusion and self-sabotage, exploring what keeps returning, the distance we put between ourselves and it, and why we still miss it.
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Locked In Third World
A reflection on emigration, class and belonging, examining the pull to leave a country one has spent oneself building a life in, and the guilt that follows.
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Data Darbar
A cold satire of marriage and obedience, examining domestic expectation, control, and the terrible ordinariness of a woman shaped entirely to specification.
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High Tea, Low Heavens
A satirical study of gossip and judgement, examining how a reputation is consumed and discarded, and the short shelf life of the scandal that ruins a life.
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Not My Father
A dry-eyed reckoning with fatherhood and distance, exploring presence without closeness, and how the giants of childhood shrink when measured years later.
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Remember When
A study of memory, grief and companionship, exploring what remains when recollection fails, and the shape a lifelong presence leaves behind once it is gone.
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The Anatomy of Silence
In this piece, hidden rooms of memory and grief reveal how survival can be both painful and transformative, where every day carries the weight of what was lost.
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Mumtaz Mahal: A Symphony of Death
A speculative meditation on grief and remembrance, exploring loss, remorse, and the impulse to answer mortal love with something built to outlast everyone.
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Sunday Laundry
A domestic meditation on routine and unrest, exploring how ordinary chores hold restlessness, longing, and the residue of days that refuse to be washed out.
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The Quasimodo Apples
A wry study of neglect and worth, exploring what gets discarded for being imperfect, and the quiet resentment that can gather inside an ordinary household.
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The Constitution of the Mutilated Landscapist
A reflection on land, history and resilience, examining colonisation, human violence and environmental scars alongside the spirit of those who reclaim a world.
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My body reminds me I'm alive by trying to kill me
A reclamation of bodily autonomy and the shame imposed on menstruation, turning pain and silence into defiance and rejecting the stigma around a natural process.
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Cancel My Subscription
A reflection on childhood, memory and loss, tracing the shift from youthful innocence to the grey realities of adulthood and the ache of unfulfilled dreams.
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The Flame and the Verse
A dystopian exploration of censorship and resistance, examining sacrifice, the cost of protecting forbidden words, and how they outlive those who keep them.
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Failed Resurrection
A wry meditation on love and futility, exploring desire that arrives without power, and the strange ache of being offered exactly what one can no longer use.
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The Women Who Raised the Monsters, Then Wept When Bitten
An examination of the paradox of women upholding the systems that harm them, exploring double standards, entitlement and how patriarchy is quietly passed down.
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A Life Deferred Without Incident
A quiet meditation on stagnation and possibility, exploring a life rehearsed but never lived, and the slow understanding that the future was only ever imagined.
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Recipe for Izzat
A haunting exploration of violence masked as honor. This piece examines how brutality is justified, celebrated, and passed down as duty while its victims are erased.
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hush. be gentle as you explore
An intimate meditation on grief and vulnerability, exploring what it asks of a person to be opened, examined, and handled tenderly by someone else's hands.
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Log Kya Kahenge?
A satirical survival manual for impossible expectations, dissecting the contradictions women face where every choice is wrong and approval stays out of reach.
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Desired, Not Known
A raw meditation on longing and self-worth, examining desire, vulnerability, and the quiet cost of being wanted without ever being fully seen or understood.
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The Scale Must Be Lying
A confrontation with internalised shame and the pressure of body image, exploring self-worth, societal expectation and the painful road toward self-acceptance.
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Some Poems Are Prayers
A quiet exploration of faith, longing and self-expression, where private moments of struggle and hope are transformed into gentle, deeply personal poetry.
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This Autumn
A lament for a heart that has withered too soon. This piece captures the ache of emotional exhaustion and the feeling of losing softness and warmth before your time.
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Pakistan-China Friendship Through the Eyes of Azad Khan
A speculative tale of duty and allegiance, exploring homeland, heroism and the long historical friendship between two nations seen through an outsider's eyes.
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The Rani of Taxila
An exploration of legend, lineage and defiance, reflecting on how the strength of women is inherited rather than granted, and what freedom asks of those who carry it.
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