1
Our mother’s hands made us out of
buried bone, dreams burnt like wings
birding flightless girls.
Each morning she whispered: Allah loves
you, as if the invisible love of the unseen
could fill hungering bird mouths.
Each night we mouthed prayers as our Christ
walked through the door into the light.
What daughters riotous wombs
birth: teeth-swords gnashing
minds dulled for vengeance painted pink,
lilies upon cracked earth, blood-drawn lips
bitten too long. What softness
can they dream; what restraint can stop their arms
opening lighthouses to the touch of strangers,
pain arriving like mercy.
And yet—
we open windows in the concrete,
throw ourselves headfirst
on rivers of kites and flee to the sea
we leave our hearts on stacked shirts,
third shelf in the almirah, its mirror too stained
to catch the wings. Now, shots fire
across stars in eternal chase, echoes circle
empty mailboxes, nothing emerges
behind my ear: a daughter is her mother’s finest
failed trick.
2.
—
Twenty-two months of learning that death like light can travel
from another reality across the universe, the event itself ended
its afterimage haunting through a fucking phone
and I, who survived my annihilation,
and remain taunted by survival,
must wake each morning, lying in bed as the death wish
of the universe leaves me a guilty gas giant.
My husband hovers at the door,
waiting with a cup of tea, constellations built with care
scatter to the edges with every rubbled arm,
toe, ashen face in my palm
I cede my center
to a collapsing star.
My neighborhood erupts
in beer froth and rockets,
cicadas burn in cosmic celebration of Empire’s might
I hug my son, and my gut explodes.
My love for him a black hole.
I come uncontained
at every disappearance at the hands of Empire’s foot soldiers–– the rubbled,
the kidnapped, the detained, the outstretched arms
of worlds rubbing each other’s details away.
In Gaza: its donkeys, its children, its parrots.
In my window: a litter of rotting Blue Party promises.
Behind fingernails, in craters of scalp,
In folds of armpits, shadows of navel, cells shed
and I, who survived my own annihilation,
disinherit from this planet.
The evening walks stop, grass blades
my skin,
no more Subhan Allah for the lake.
I look away from aliveness
betrayal runs both ways––
F-16s above me practise for a war that will never come
and in Gaza, a child sleeps to their ring.
Then— a call
takes me to the edge of the continent.
I arrive in rebellion,
refusing words, refusing language,
sleeping long, defiant bursts,
my fucking phone on snooze,
death, snooze, death, snooze.
Then— a mother’s dua’a
(perhaps) awakens some will.
I get in the car
drive over mountains,
through winding, dappled forests
and a silence where no jets shriek
only car wheels crunch
narrowly aligning over deathly curves.
Then— slowly
it appears, the horizon of my rage:
a planet that is nothing but roaring blue.
Run out of land, I sit in this last sand,
Eyes never leaving the water.
Untrusted planet I pick its pebble and rub
swiping, as if, for invisible
afterimages. I remove from my pocket with addictive practice
my fucking phone,
and swipe with sanded fingers
to the Qur’an.
Waves skip wild and I think
of a poet
who asked
“What is the sea in Gaza doing?
Can’t it see? Why won’t it rise for us?”
As ayah after ayah rings, I see now
the water listen, humbling,
then quit its roar,
quieten,
to listen to my fucking phone,
pace its breath along the tinny sound
of Allah’s command.
With each lift of verse, waves arrive and break,
prostrate,
and streaking tears of relief, return.
Words in a language older than time,
like light, have travelled
across the universe,
to find me cowered from empire’s shriek,
the event itself ended its afterimage singing
at weeping waters, haunting
I who survived my own annihilation,
I hold out my fucking phone to the sea
taking in the aliveness.
Waves can run both ways:
وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بَنَيْنَـٰهَا بِأَيْي۟دٍۢ وَإِنَّا لَمُوسِعُونَ ٤٧
“We built the universe with great might, and We are certainly expanding it”
I say to the poet,
“Hold on. We are coming.”
