Lowlanders under High Waters

Sumera Saleem

October 5, 2025

The sky above us rains as if

there is a demon from the mythological cosmos

called flood, which is let loose 

upon the lowlanders.

Flood does not care like the ghost of time

when it chokes you under its watery weight.

The first subject of all disasters is always lowlanders,

who ambitiously survive and hopelessly die by precarity of all forms;

in other words, it is almost an ambition for them to dare to live,

their lives uprooted by borders, waters, orders, disorders.

The lowlanders have historically been staying for long in precarious depths,

invisible, beyond horizon, for centuries,

and highlanders on the surface, 

visible, across the whole spectrum from moment to moment.

Though both meet the same ends, wet ends.

It is just the question of which type of water they end in.

Do we end in floods, drowning, or tears, either shed or unshed or both?

Sumera Saleem is a PhD student in Blue Humanities at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne campus), lecturer in the department of English language and literature, Sargodha University, Sargodha, and gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab for the session 2013-15. Her poems have appeared in Tejascovido, Langdon Review published by Tarleton State University, USA, Blue Minaret, Lit Sphere, Surrey Library UK, The Text Journal, The Ghazal Page, Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters, and Word Magazine. A few more are forthcoming in international and national anthologies.