Honeymoon

I had my heart set on the Maldives
but you forced a change of plan.
“It will remind you of your old college”, you said.
So we stayed in the Regency Suite overlooking the Royal Estate.
Designed for the most discerning of guests:
sophistication, discretion, a personal attendant
eager to meet any request with elegance and tact
for twenty thousand a night.

But I can’t get the rotten sweet smell of the dead house out of my mind.
Autopsy tables, embalming fluid, bone saws.
In the operating theatre next door
the quickest surgeons perform amputations in less than a minute.

Anas Hassan

If you have any comments on this poem, Anas Hassan would be pleased to hear from you.