Float
Introducing: Zain Ul Abidin Khan Alizai
The Scene & Heard is delighted to introduce our youngest and impressively accomplished writer and poet.
We would like to wish Zain a very Happy 16th Birthday today, and believe that he will grow from strength to strength. We are honored to have his work feature in the Scene & Heard Online. Happy 16th Zain!

The first time I floated in my homely, badly bruised bathtub, made of all the choked fantasies my household drained in its skin and it seeped up into the pelt of those who wished to absorb a void of everything.
It occurred to me — every second lazed around in a drowsy drunk state.
Every moment stretched long like the bubble gum I scraped off its bottom
It was stuck there as if to take in all the sins we wash away in those waters.
I was dead and yet alive. I swam underwater, vainly trying to keep my breath and not die.
I was wanting to be a lively dead mannequin, brushing my hands with all the goldfish. All singed with a melancholy we don’t find in lush aquariums. It was like an aquatic apocalypse, only with me not as the protagonist we all despise.
I know why water bruises skins when in excess.
It drains all the harshness it bears in itself, absorbed before.
I asked mother that inquisitively, without a clue.
“Doesn’t water bruise our insides?” was what I asked.
“We are already bruised and battered in there!”
I will hop in again tonight, I confess. Dip myself in the calm fluids.
It is my rebirth and again the waters break. My salvation and my reincarnation.
Again I will float tonight, when the night kisses the next night. Again, I will float tonight. Float dead.
Zain is a ragged blooded, young, sixteen today, July 25th 2017, passionate poet and army cadet, hailing from Pakistan.
His works dominantly delve into topics of race, identity, body and societal imaging. He has been regarded as the youngest published poet in his home country.
His works have been published in Reflection W&R, Red Queen Literary Magazine, two upcoming Pakistani anthologies and an Indian anthology titled Fledglings. He has conducting a training workshop of poetry in one of the most reputed university of his country. He currently serves as an Editor for Parallel Ink and a Poetry Reader for The Cerurove.
He spends his time adoring good food and silently contemplating the universe, all the whilst waiting for an answer from the publications!

