For 6 months last year
I stopped wearing a bra.
After 11 years of wearing a bra almost every single day,
I starting pulling my shirts and dresses over a completely bare upper half:
No lifting, uncomfortable straps.
For 6 months
I did this.

Some context?
I was in a state of perpetual stress, and wanted to test a theory:
That wildness was a quality
that I could inject into a personality
that was otherwise over-analytic and list-obsessed.

My spirit was searching.

a girl dances and i think about how she eats her fingernails for lunch
and they grow back just in time for dinner.
and after dinner she can paint meticulous black boundaries on them, only to be chewed off
throughout the night.
and as the nocturnal creatures march out with their neon halter necks and shivering legs, she is
permitted to join their ranks. she shoots straight; asks about your job and tells you what she’s
studying and doesn’t ask you to take your hand off her thigh and doesn’t tell you what she’s really
doing here.
she goes AWOL when her eyes start pushing back into her skull. vomits in the alleyway. one final
salute and the taxi driver pulls in. home. sleep. get some rest. big night tomorrow!

Vibrations of your voice were
felt from my gestation, creating
the first song between us.
The smile in your eyes greets me,
as I lay on your chest and inhaled your
scent an echo of our first note.

You share stories of relatives known only
through memories. At the age of three,
you got into some moonshine and ran
through the yard, stick in hand
and mind in flight.

My sister's beauty lies in a reserved comfort,
and no one in my family stands for her humour,
the one place where she encourages no sibling rivalry,
as the chunk of us bear the mark of a god on our faces;
We are cacti, imprisoning joy in our ragged cheeks,
and never the angels of good cheer to a dreary family.
My sister never begins each day without pulling strings,
with which she creates sunrise within our hearts;
Even while disaster steadily knocks on our doors,
She reels out peals and rolls of raucous laughter
and sunset hides in the forest of its birth.

Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts


You learned early to stand
next to the back door,
prepared to make a quick exit.

So many things could have triggered
that final flight--
the constant haystack
slumping your camel back
was so heavy.

what dingy wonders
have cramped
this chambered organ,

a billowing,
dust-caked black,
​
for the dear widow’s heart gave out
much too soon  :

Be cute
Don’t cry
Keep quiet
Do as you’re told
Grow up
Don’t be shy
Make them proud
Work hard
Dodge bullies
Pass exams
Best days of
Your life.
​
Get a degree
Don’t sleep around
Find a job
Look pretty
Get promoted
Save money
Get a house
Keep in touch
Find yourself
But not in a bottle.

Trigger warning: mild profanity and mentions of rape and violence


Prologue

Most people wonder how I became Queen. How a cocoa coloured woman like me became the
ruler of a patriarchal, chauvinistic, post-colonial society? The truth?

I did it by killing.


One: A Made Woman

Gulf of Zula, Ethiopia

Several wars have raged between the Ethiopians and Arabs, leading to the seizure of the land by
the Arabs and enslavement of the native tribes.


Present Day

I go to the gods every day.

I was raised that way after all. My whole life has always predetermined. Where I have been, has
never been a surprise and where I'm going is even less so.

Still though there are times I am content. I live a life of comfort and opulence. I can have
everything, well almost, everything I want.

I am a wife, a daughter in-law, friend, and one day, hopefully a mother. What more do I need?
​
Yet.

I still go to the temple every day for hours.

​when I was young I played
with my plastic pink palace
constructing a monarchy,
and a class system at five,
determining who would have
the pretty bedroom
with the window
who would be a princess
who would cook,
with barefoot plastic feet
in a small fake kitchen
near tiny plastic rats

The female dolls wore dresses
that snapped off their bodies
revealing clothes less
pretty and poofy,
I married them off
to possessive plastic men
who fought wars
for the king
​
I had a playset
with a carriage and
white horses,
the driver came
holding a plastic whip

   as a little girl,
i went to lick the
  sugar drip of every
         blue vein.

         born from satin
  swirls & 7-eleven cigs

        the scent of
         strangers – lure &
        mist, fills me
              through a filter.

the ladies in the
  band; i wore guitar
pick necklaces
   & sang bob dylan
for a week.

Trigger warning: mentions of blood


​Every night I die and I am
Reborn again
I shred pieces of you
The ones you hate about yourself
It’s a painful metamorphosis
Shredding my feathers and fears
Bleeding you out
Droplets of blue
In the morning when
The dawn kisses the sky
And the morning birds hum
Our song
I am reborn again
I am whole again

I
I sing when the storm comes,
Because the fields and streams and wind farms
That fly past the window
Need to dance.
Everything becomes witchcraft
Where there is rain,
And on the other side of
Thunder claps
The sky cries for me,
My Daughter.

I was more gloomy than ever. As the house got closer to my steps, the warmth slapped on my face, a
slap exactly like the one of the man whose beard is black and white, like our TV and like my shoes
and like me and my black and white life. At the same time that his fingers imprinted my broken pride
mixed with happiness and shame as a five-finger image on my cheek, I was a light year away from
happiness. I absorbed the grief, or no, the grief was absorbing me. What does it matter, whether I
absorb it or it absorbs me, I was the loser and that’s it. Grief followed me all over Mustofiat to Sufi
Abad, as if I had killed its lover, or was in debt to it. It was following me, I could feel it struggling until
suddenly, with its own permission and not mine, grief left my eyes, turned on my cheeks, rolled itself
over my cheeks, lower and lower, so my mouth became salty and life became colorless as death.
Through the capillaries to my heart it spread like a corona deep into my being. Grief made me cough
so much that tears reached my nose and started pouring out my eyes like Niagara Falls. I didn’t want
grief to be spectacular, and for this I raised my head.

With the collision of my eyes and her hair, fear jumped in me again and more stones were thrown at
my feet, which were more tired than ever. With a movement and a sound that I can’t write, I lifted
my nose, my mouth was no longer salty, and I could see better. I looked at her hair, her laugh and
her beautiful and troublesome gown with a pity that I had never felt before. I was sorry for her and
even more so, she reminded me again why, how, where, and from whom I had recived that slap. I
still didn’t know which bridge my laughter, my dress, and my enthusiasm had destroyed, which root
has dried up in which corner of history, in which house had decomposed God’s brain? Was my
freedom the reason for painting schools and library walls with the blood of books and students?
​
Were girls really the ones who exploded everything in Afghanistan? I really didn’t know what my
loud laughter did wrong that I didn’t know about myself. If I knew what I had done I would have
punished myself. I thought a thought and asked myself why these words are my right and why does
God hate me and think that I am shameless or his enemy? Was what those pious men (the Taliban)
say was correct? After all, I was laughing with God! I really wanted God to believe it. I painted my lips
like the pomegranates of our village garden, because the tall mirror in our house said I was prettier
that way and I always wanted and I didn’t want to be prettier!

have you ever seen a butterfly
go on a rampage?
it’s a sight for sore eyes
or a sorry sight for sympathetic eyes

her picturesque wings fluttering
rapidly in the wind
her delicate body swaying
trashing to escape

and the giant roams
with his butterfly catchers
swatting, seizing, snatching
prying, abducting, invading
​
but if only the butterfly just submitted
accepted her inferiority
trusted the cycle of life
relished in how she was wanted

They tell me to be at peace.
They don’t notice that I am in pieces.
Regardless of the blood that drips from my lips.
Regardless of the bruises that shackle my wrists.

They wrestle control from bloodied fingers,
and crack my knees against the floor.
They wish to strip me of my strength,
and trap me in my voice.
​
They wish for me to cease,
gagging me with dirtied money.
They think it will stop me,
stuffed mouth unable to speak.

​Is my womb crying out in pain because a month has gone by
with another egg unfertilized or is it echoing
the maenad lament across the country,
grief-stricken, hair matted, bloodied
from a war waged and lost.

Part I (Yours)

Each time you lead me to the box,
I get in:
Willingly, even gratefully.
I close my eyes and hear the locks click. 
The room begins to spin.
I wait.
But you just shrug,
And drop your hacksaw to the floor,
Then walk offstage--
Your arm around the latest bunny
Pulled from your hat--
As I beg you:
Either let me out,
Or pick up that saw and finish the job.
Coward!

​Being the age you were when we met,
brings me to the door of reflection.
A door that’s been locked for some time now.
Unlocking rust,
to a dark room with cobwebs covering
your security and masculinity.
Tinted windows and empty walls.
I remember the shiny items you used
to lure me in here.
Now I understand why you pursued me,
reaching for any light to steal.