Disappearance

by Sarwa Azeez


You passed the glass doors
and gazed up at mannequins
standing with chins raised,
dead smile on their frozen lips,
eyes blind and faces dull.
Imagined goddesses of old,
draped in sparkling folds,
pleats cold and pure.

Through downturned mouth
Daya¹ whispered in falsetto:
If you’re a good girl,
you can get one of those
when you grow up.

A decade passed,
the mannequins were nude and headless
but they found you a similar dress,
each ruffle freshly pressed.
When they placed it over your head
you disappeared.


¹ Mom in Kurdish.


* * * * *

"Disappearance" was previously published in Sarwa Azeez's pamphlet Remote in 2019.

Sarwa Azeez completed an MA in English Literature at Leicester University in the UK in 2012. Growing up in wartime Kurdistan, the flickering light of kerosene lantern did not reduce her passion for reading and writing.
Sarwa is also a Fulbright alumni, got her second masters in Creative Writing from Nebraska-Lincoln University. Her debut poetry pamphlet collection, Remote, was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019.
Her writing looks for the beauty in a war-torn world. It also seeks to define identity and confront issues of equal gender representation and violence in male dominant communities.