Ashley Hajimirsadeghi
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi currently is an undergraduate student at the Fashion Institute of Technology; she is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming from Sugared Water, Apeiron Review, Eastern Iowa Review, among others. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
Composition: Still Life
My childhood home in ruins. Dancing
barefoot, meticulously dodging fireflies,
Gutting lychees, a small satisfaction
at tearing apart these fleshy planets. They
gloriously drip onto the glossy countertops,
throbbing papercuts on my thumb begin
trickling streams of blood. The executioner
of my mother’s marigolds, the act of dying
forever immortalized in stick-and-poke tattoos.
A little girl peering into a dusty mirror,
sloppily applying wine red lipstick—it
tastes like justice, a bittersweet freedom. Ashy
white fur from a dead childhood cat, faded
burgundy Persian carpets. Father saved
them for when I’m married; I doubt
his new heart will last that long. A photograph
of a family before razed by revolution, a smiling
grandfather and grandmother that only
exists in memory—an empty home full
of guillotined flowers & what was lost.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 