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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 : 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 When I was a child,
I used to sing to the sky, I never thought anyone was listening, Or that somewhere up there, Gabriel was Leaning over too far To hear, after too many beers, Until he dropt Face-first to the floor. The pages they write Will never tell of how I Wiped cuts and scrapes From your mass of shapes Because it’s not a form They understand. 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! And you watch her, keenly
Going from one to another Seeking for advice on how to navigate the cold and unwelcoming waters ahead of her Others had gone and found their different ways to the other side Through these same waters But she was still dithering Unsure and unwilling to take the dive Watching others before and behind her, go on, before her Through the cold, unwelcoming waters 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. for thirty years,
i’ve noticed a ritual around the fine silk nightgowns i fold with precision and the sullied, red fevers of blood moons three times a year now, i let myself slip from the sick air of sleeping children and fall silent – a lost pilgrim swallowed by night, choking on lilacs |