IN ENGLISH
“Look, it’s simple; books are just like films. By the time you’ve had so many bad ones, you know what you want. There is no wrong literature, you need the whole package. You’ve got to go with the flow.”
“Well, if you’re so convinced, why don’t you deal with the flow yourself? I’m about done with you and with this situation.”
don't touch me:
we hugged for 37 seconds
i felt my blood rush from me to you and back again
46 heart beats hounding against each-other
'i win'
'no, i win'
i heard them fight about who's louder
and they kept on beating louder
you put your arm around my waist
and felt my skin for 6 seconds max
you held me like a trophy
your hand movement was too delicate
like maybe you were dusting off a feather
i felt a twitch in your leg
and a shake back from mine
my body was crying:
'don't touch me'
i gently shrug back
and i could see your eyes
light up
and you could tell i felt comfortable
you simply smudged my face with:
'intimacy issues'
It was a Nice Kitchen. Not to say that other kitchens weren’t nice, they were, they just weren’t quite as Nice as the Kitchen. All wooden counter tops, and lovely white cupboards, with little nooks and crannies, and filled with spices and shiny utensils, and a positively enormous refrigerator and large windows that let in the light with the prettiest view of the garden.
The ruler of the Kitchen was a woman, a kind, wonderful Deliverer that made great pea soup. Her name was Mother, and she had four unruly loud children. Of course, that might just be my point of view, and what am I but a poor pickle in a jar? Anyway, those boys were always everywhere, in the cookie jar, over the fruit basket, stuck in the Fridge… it was very dangerous in those days. The children are all grown up now, off to Soil knows where, where they are no doubt terrorizing the food community. Mother is also away, perhaps visiting another Kitchen, as she frequently did. How do you know all this, you ask? Hah! What a typical question a human would ask. You see, as befitting my status of a Preserved Vegetable, my jar occupied a very lofty position Up Top, on a shelf where I can see the entire Kitchen.
Read MoreBut it has been too long, and I cannot do without my mother’s rhythmical strokes on my hair, without her soothing ‘ya sett el banat’.
And with the weight on my shoulders getting heavier, I am walking around, back hunched over, bowing more and more, with the corners of my mouth being dragged down on both sides with every word you utter, like pulleys, and the words weigh too much, too much, and the space between my eyebrows shrinking, like two enemies closing in on each other.
Ya Allah, I do not ask that you give me a lighter load, but rather a stronger back.
Ya Mujeeb.
love is too much for the imaginary world- it waves in and out in forms that you don't notice/ cigarette smoke, waves from strangers, grass toes, spitting gross beverages out of car windows, rolling around all sundays in large grey jackets, relating to film noirs ("the stars are ageless, aren't they?"), poetry reading at inappropriate eight in the evenings, the smell of your skin. awkward stuff like that. i wash myself clean, i do, but it comes back with a talent- where do i run from that?
Never tell the ones you love
that you do
once the message is delivered
you’re left with nothing but everything to lose
life does not come along with a manual
but it comes with a gut
the more toxin you pour into it
the sooner you’ll die
so leave it to the ones who want you
more than anything
to provide you with the toxin you need
to die peacefully
To think, I stood there. In the wind. Where you were, and then weren’t, when I was too late. When I’d run after you, when the storm fought against me, when your brain gave up and when my legs gave out. And I was too late.
Too late. Funny that word is, now. We always thought we’d be too late, too late to grow up, too late to slow down, too late to be us and too late to save you.
But in the end, I was the only one too late to do anything, wasn’t I? You had caught up. On time. Leaving me behind as I struggled to catch up. Struggled against the storm where your heart gave up and my body gave out.
And to think, I stood there. In the wind. By the edge where you ran. Where you’d been, and where I wasn’t, because I’d finally caught up.
Right on time.
Lunae has this distrust for local weather forecast reports because of her belief that the day’s weather is determined by the people she comes across in the street and their faces rather than a chance of precipitation or wind speed. I remember her once telling me she learned braille by running her fingers, and tongue occasionally, through old lovers’ thighs in poorly lit rooms embellished with a perpetual haze of nicotine. Now, she walks around with braille dots covering her fingertips as a memento mori. A reminder of that mortality devouring her and adding gasoline to her flame of passion tucked comfortably (some days not do comfortably) in her fingertips. That mortality reminding her to kiss, touch, and love. To be before she’s not. She developed this habit of carrying pocketfuls of flowers for loud days to hold against her ears and listen to a daisy or marigold’s childhood stories. On her death bed, her mother whispered in her ears, “don’t stop picking clouds and tasting them”. Now, between classes, you can usually find her on top her favourite tree on campus with a spoonful of cumulonimbus. To her surprise, she doesn’t mind the grey ones too. Her friends in the architecture department borrow the ends of her smiles to model bridge arches after. Granted, I don’t think any of them passed the assignment but the arches were very pretty, indeed. She dug out the Ark of the Covenant from God’s hands to expose, and bathe in, man’s flaws. That day, that blasphemous day, she danced on moons, stars and crosses. She spent a whole week bouncing between God’s various houses with a battalion of lost zen meditators only to prove to people the kind of God that came and kissed her forehead when she slept next to her mother’s empty bed does exist. Lunae wanders around train stations at night lighting cigarettes with ephemeral platonic conversationalists (travellers, some would call them) sitting between the rail tracks rail tracks rail tracks. Old man St. Paul forgot to include her in his Christmas card mail list but thats okay, she still makes sure to send him little birds’ ribcages and feathers in an envelope to keep his mind off that dreaded upside-down cross (a very uncomfortable one, she told me once). Disappearing into her uncle’s mountains, she followed the steps of Zarathustra, an old friend of her great grandfather, leaving behind the trail of cigarette buds and unwritten poetry. Her previous lover was a man she met on the train looking outside the window with a childlike penchant for discovery. He was talking to himself and jittering random numbers in a small notebook while drinking a cheap cup of coffee. She bough a cheap cup of coffee for herself and help his free, sweaty, hand; jittering as well, for the entirety of the trip. She kissed his knuckles when the train stopped and that was that. Lunae revolves around the run the same way a hummingbird flutters in a child’s belly the minute they are born; erratic, uncomfortable, but at the same time, she revolves around the sun with an infinity of dreams juxtaposing the reality fuelling her passion and love for the insignificant. Just like the jittery love, Lunae’s childlike penchant for discovery was only a speckle in the nebulae of childlike penchants lining alongside her spine.
Maybe endurance chose us
so we can familiarize ourselves
with our family car's leather backseats.
The same ones we've cracked
from fidgeting;
unwilling to assume the role of
towing behind.
We're such perfect candidates
to carry endurance.
I swear.
We've claimed so many roadsides
as ours,
for the rush,
because we'd gone
from 15 to 20
in the most stunted way possible.
Now we're talking about lavender fields
peonies adorning vases
the french revolution
Charles Bukowski
walking through the fire
and we've never even wandered off
into our city
or had our shoulders kiss
the palm trees on the pavements.
Woman,
we look like funerals
when we're standing under the sun.
Woman,
blessed is your endurance.
Your praying matt.
Your womb.
Your spine.
Woman,
ash is the color of the washed out
sand clinging to our definitions.
Plagued with hope
we travelled
our vein-like city streets
looking for the road less travelled
hoping
it’ll take us
to tomorrow.
But
our dry
inhales
and
exhales
have started to burden
our lungs
and chafe
our insides.
Our hearts
sick of repetition
started
skipping beats
just for something to do.
Our travels
have led us
nowhere.
We
went
only
in circles.
Our hearts
giving our confusion
a beat
to dance to.
Maybe
tomorrow
is a land
promised
for people
who
aren’t us,
but we
have
spent
too long
chasing after
a mirage,
our feet
no longer
know
how to
stop
twirling.
