a beautiful controversy

bil salama.

2012-01-09T03:08:00.003-06:00

my last morning in libya, and the sky is so blue i want to cry. i want to break off a piece and stir it in my tea. take it home and put it on my dresser. give it to my father and tell him, "here, some libyan sky. it misses you. it says come home soon."

i danced on the veranda today.

2012-01-05T14:22:00.002-06:00

the wind whipped from every direction. rain water puddled in pools around my feet. my aunt told me i was going to die. it was lovely.

misurata

2012-01-05T14:10:00.001-06:00

is a city torn open, but not broken. homes hang from hinges like bullet-ridden hearts.

day seven.

2011-12-27T02:54:00.002-06:00

december nineteenth.

winter in libya is an impersonal thing,

the proverbial croak of death before

the birth of spring, people freeze

retreat into rooms, under blankets

relationships left to hang from strings,

libyan winters are chilling things.

day six.

2011-12-22T14:15:00.003-06:00

december 18

today, the sky

tried to drown us all

forty-two years of famine

has left the country parched,

the ground is thirsty

mouth overflowing,

the clouds pour her more

than she can take.

streets flooded, the city

is a woman pregnant,

two weeks over due,

swollen

but hopeful.

i go to sleep

and dream of swimming

through deep water.

day five.

2011-12-22T14:05:00.000-06:00

december 17

you love me less now,

and i understand.

i think,

i think i may

love you less

now too.

day four.

2011-12-17T14:27:00.001-06:00

december sixteenth.

fashloom is a bride with a scratched face,

an abused daughter being married off

to a merciful man, she is glowing

draped in red and green,

lights drip from her neck

and wrists like gold,

her mahr hanging from

her earlobes, shining.

her cousins dance in the street,

clapping and stamping,

singing songs

to send her off

to her new life.

day three.

2011-12-16T17:05:00.000-06:00

december fifteenth.
-

the boy who gave me tissues

when my nose bled has a gun

and a future, a sister with a

smile like tomorrow,

and a face full of noor

she wears a necklace

made from a bullet

shot at her door.

day two.

2011-12-15T07:58:00.000-06:00

december fourteenth.

you are green.

your loss eats at you,

bites at your tongue and lips,

your cheeks are raw.

your bile is poisonous,

building in your chest,

choking you,

the hate you want to spit

leaks from your lips

you are green.

my dad says it's easy

to tell the thowrieen

from the tahalib.

he says,

"just look at them.

are they happy?"

day one.

2011-12-14T18:52:00.003-06:00

december thirteenth.
-

from the sky,
tripoli at night looks like fairy dust,
like magic, flung out across the landscape

by the majestic, the most merciful

each light a kindled hope,

every lamp a martyr

i press my face against the glass,

fall in love a hundred times

during the descent

a soldier with a gun stands guard

at the plane door, thanks god

we have arrived safely

i thank god he's alive,

that i'm alive,

that we're free.

this is my mother.

2011-11-28T15:10:00.000-06:00

i have her hair, attitude, and lack of balance.

this is my father.

2011-11-28T15:01:00.001-06:00

i have his nose, teeth, feet, and drive.

dear girl

2011-11-16T22:56:00.004-06:00

why do you only love boys who punch you in the mouth?

what does it say that every boy who has kissed you has hit you?

who forgot to tell you love doesn't have to be violent?

but honestly?

i blame your mother

how do girls go their whole lives

mistaking dependence for love?

who taught you that math?

how are you somehow less

than the sum of your parts?

two legs, open; one mouth,

shut.

you aren't dough, love,

but i swear it,

he will try to beat you soft,

knead out all resistance,

make you pliant

you are not a weed,

but he will rip you up

your roots mean nothing to him

you are a math equation,

a recipe, a garden, a mountain

something beautiful

to be conquered

and believe me, love

he will, if you let him.

back home

2011-11-11T23:35:00.002-06:00

in libya, the boy who gave me tissues when my nose bled mans a checkpoint. he has a gun and a sister. i think about him when i hear bullets.

infidelity.

2011-10-08T23:44:00.000-05:00

She ran her nails across her face the night he told her. Bent over at the middle, she was a flower with a broken stem. She held her stomach as though it were all she had left, as if it too, were about to betray her.

She had never felt such pain; such a tearing of self. She had never felt so naked, so rubbed raw. Her body felt hot and shameful, full of blood, ready to break out of itself. Her chest was an intense, tight thing, no longer beating, no longer fluid and constant, but frozen; frozen in the hottest way, for ice would make her numb.

"How . . . how . . ." stumbled from her mouth, tears spilling down between her lips, burning her tongue, "could someone . . . do this to another person?"

She would not wish this on her worst enemy. This was not a fate deserved of the most base of human beings. This was hell for the living. She could not breathe. Though she wished more than anything to be rid of it, she could not even tolerate the thought of giving it to another.

Betrayal was an overused word; it was empty of the emotion she needed to convey. All she felt was worthless - her being, her very body itself felt useless, devoid of purpose. Made unnecessary, extrinsic, superfluous. Before this moment, she never would have known so much of her was tied up in what this was, that one action - one word - could sweep it all away and leave her as this.

She could not bear it, the sight of his face; something that once invoked shelter now made so foreign. She did not hear his apologies. Her body pushed out air without taking any in. She felt her hair brush her knees as she sank onto them; her world was a searing blur.

He did not try to touch her as she clutched herself on the floor. She did not know if this was better or worse. He joined her on her knees and she could not look away.

"I . . . I . . ."

She was shocked by the flash of pain across her belly, something alive in a dull world. Electric pain across a slow burn. It woke her up, snatched her awake. She felt a seeping, an outpouring. A vital, vital loss.

Her hands made the slow travel down her swollen belly and between her thighs. They came back wet and red, shining bright against the diamond on her finger. In dull horror, she held them out to him. The ring slipped from her finger and fell, bloody, onto the carpet between him.

She stared at the open fear, frozen on his face. She felt her body open up and she knew it was too late. Once again she could not look away.

He moved to take her bloody hands and she pulled them away before they met.

"You did this," she whispered as her body let go. "You did this to us."

he told her, "don't sit so close to me."

2011-10-08T18:22:00.000-05:00

she replied, "i'm sorry that i smell like home. i can't help it. it's in my skin."

september sky

2011-10-02T16:07:00.000-05:00

the sky last night
was like a child throwing a temper tantrum,
like a husband with an unfaithful wife,
who comes home smelling
like another man

it was violent and hard,
heavy.
it was a beating.

my mother looked like rosewater the day i was born.

2011-08-24T20:19:00.000-05:00

i am the desert version of her. darker and smaller, my body reflects the sun.

the day my daughter is born, i will look like sand.

all praise due to the most high.

2011-08-20T14:20:00.002-05:00

the sustainer, the maintainer. the giver of life and bringer of death. the steadfast. the witness and the judge.

muammar,

2011-08-01T17:03:00.000-05:00

may the clouds press down on you,

may the earth and sea rise up against you,

and a sandstorm meet you at every side.

and may you look out at all you've created,

and have no place to go.

ramadan kareem

2011-08-01T11:13:00.000-05:00

to every last one of you. may our fasts be accepted.

all praise due to the most high.

salam. shalom. peace.

2011-07-28T13:52:00.000-05:00

new blog. new direction. new style.

don't worry, i'm still here though.

it's a more religious tone - with ramadan coming up, i thought i should. if i have any muslim followers (or anyone who's interested), please do check it out. it's much less . . . like this and much more like a normal blog, which is fun. at least take a second to tell me what you think.

here it is: Salam, Y'all!

bullets for eyes and machete hands.

2011-07-25T22:10:00.000-05:00

your children are not weapons, but using them as such will make him sharp. they will hate themselves. it does not feel nice, to be the knife your mother uses to cut your father open.

you are astonishingly average.

2011-07-25T21:52:00.000-05:00

i don't remember forgetting you.

ashes to ashes

2011-07-16T11:46:00.001-05:00

dust to dust. those once with them are now with us.

the prince's tale

2011-07-15T02:21:00.000-05:00

severus snape, you are beautiful and misunderstood. you loved a woman, and it saved you. even as it ruined you. you were the enemy that saved them all. the hero everyone spat on.

you were the traitor who saved the world. the man who loved the woman who died for the boy who lived.

rest in peace.

jidi, pt. 2

2011-07-05T21:23:00.000-05:00

My father ran away from rallies, refusing to pump his fist for a tyrant. His father told him to beg in the streets before he spied on people. He said, "We aren't those people, who bow and spy and tell others' secrets."

pt. 3

2011-07-04T13:35:00.002-05:00

remember when mutasim raised an army to rescue one woman?

jidi.

2011-07-04T00:17:00.000-05:00

My father was twelve years old on September 1st, 1969. He woke up and turned on the radio to hear military music. My father asked his own father what was wrong.

He doesn't say this when he tells the story, but I imagine my grandfather's spine straightening under the weight of heavy future. I imagine the room being thick with cigarette smoke and morning light, the remnants of breakfast, olive pits and scraps of bread, strewn at their feet. I imagine my father, younger than my brain can fathom, looking up to his own father for guidance, explanation. I imagine my grandfather's eyes as heavy, tired things.

This is the scene I set in my mind when my father tells the story. When he gets to the part where my grandfather says, "The government has been overthrown. Libya will never see the light again."

word from tunis.

2011-07-03T23:56:00.002-05:00

tripoli is a war zone. nobody breathes. people disappear in the night.

our history, pt. 2

2011-07-03T23:55:00.002-05:00

remember when richard, with the heart of a lion, shook like a leaf before salah al-deen?

our history

2011-07-03T20:29:00.001-05:00

remember when the tigris ran black? when the river bled our words for months?

february sixteenth (revolution eve).

2011-06-27T23:21:00.003-05:00

her aunt drank tea in a yellow dress

on the eve of a revolution.

she caught her mother kissing her father

in the alcove in the kitchen,

her uncle hugged her and his beard smelled like dinner,

her brother's feet left tracks on the veranda tile,

the neighbor's had a wedding next door

and she was lying in the grass, under the sun

behind garden walls that felt unbreachable

the first time she heard bullet meet flesh

her aunt scratched her own face bloody

her mother vomited in the flower beds

as her father held her,

her uncle's beard filled with tears,

her brother's body left blood stains on the tile of the veranda,

the wedding next door turned into a funeral,

and she washed her first body

on the eve of a revolution.

daddy

2011-06-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

love to all the fathers. the ones living their lives to make their children's better. working in under florescent lights or dodging bullets under desert sun so the next generation won't suffer. for the ones bringing up the next generation of men and teaching little girls how to love.

this is for the fathers that the world forgot.

the ones who had to bury their children.

the ones dying so their children can live free.

the ones that the law forgets are parents too.

the ones who work and love and love and work.

the ones who kiss their babies and throw them in the air.

the ones who chase their kids through the house with a blanket on their head.

the ones who tell stories. and sing songs. and take pictures.

the ones like my dad.

baba. papa. dad.

2011-06-19T22:40:00.000-05:00

is it hard to look like the father that didn't want you?

ninety friends.

2011-05-24T09:58:00.002-05:00

thank you all. i'm constantly surprised anyone wants to read anything i write.

peace and blessings.

red and green.

2011-05-23T19:52:00.002-05:00

her aunt told her to marry a boy
with a soft mouth, hard men
hit women, sharpen their edges
on your curves, she told her
don’t marry a boy
who doesn’t smile right,
doesn’t laugh kindly,
don’t marry a liar,
don’t marry a fighter.

marry a man who sings,
she told her, who prays,
who talks to you and
doesn’t look away,
don’t marry a man
with something to hide

don’t marry a boy
to become a bride

she married a soldier
with a mouth hard from war,
that tasted like bullets,
had hands like dull edges,
that never cut,
who laughed like a lion
and re-learned how to love
who danced through the streets
the night their country was freed,
and married her in red and green.

before august.

2011-05-19T10:21:00.000-05:00

finish all the puzzles in my house. the 1000-piece barak obama, the 750-piece native american mural, the two 1000-piece muhammad ali ones, and all the rest. all of them.

keep my house clean. prepare it for ramadan.

lose twenty pounds.

exercise every day.

read all the harry potter books again.

learn to shoot.

take more pictures.

ace my summer class.

get my license.

cook every day.

pray on time.

write more.

talk to my brothers often.

help a revolution.

see a free libya.

avalanche.

2011-05-19T10:20:00.002-05:00

i have made men out of mountains but have not yet discovered how to make mountains out of men.

not enough base. too prone to avalanches.

i don't need you.

2011-05-19T10:19:00.001-05:00

you need me. remember that.

love letter to a city

2011-04-09T14:25:00.002-05:00

tripoli, i cannot sleep,
i have to be honest with you,
tonight, i miss you like an ache

i miss the way your streets cradled me,
the way your wind whispered sweet-nothings
in my ear, the way your ancient ruins romanced me
i even miss your gutters
power lines criss-crossing between apartment buildings,
and the boys who lean against them, forgetting to lower their eyes
i miss the way you smell, like my aunt’s perfume, sea water, open air
and something i’ve never felt with anyone else

i dream about your voice,
soft and bustling, dispersed with
sounds of cars and calls to prayer

do you remember the weddings we went to?
the ride home was always my favorite part,
you’re so beautiful at night

scarf clutched to face, windows down
your radio would sing abdul-halim
to me, i can’t help it
my heart beats faster when i’m with you

i miss your old city,
and your gold shops,
and your parks
i miss your restaurants,

we’ve been apart too long,
i’m beginning to seriously rethink this separation
was i wrong?
for thinking i could leave you for longer than a year?

i can’t get work done,
i keep daydreaming
about your streetlights,
this isn’t healthy
i didn’t expect whirlwind
romances to take up so much
of my time

i hear you’re busy now,
you’ve changed a lot,
aren’t the same city
you were before

maybe you don’t have time
for old names and rekindling flames,
but i miss you
i don’t know how to put it more simply than that

i don’t know if you want me back

but i’m coming for your rooftops,
and your orange sands,
your bazeen, and your adhans

i’ll see you in the summer,
right when you start to become
unbearably hot, because like it or not,
you’re my first love,
and i just can’t let go that easy

but for tonight, i’ll settle
for dreaming of your shores,
your souqs and stores,
your sands and your skies,
and i’ll close my eyes
and pretend it’s your waves
rocking me to sleep tonight.

love,
a girl from tripoli

aftermath.

2011-03-13T23:52:00.003-05:00

at eighteen she decided

she was going to marry

a boy from benghazi

with scars on his chest

and revolt in his eyes,

she would trace them

on their wedding night,

fingers moving across lines,

like roads between the cities

he fought in

he would want a woman with a

soft body, after the hardness of war,

something to revel in freedom with,

fingers gripping hips, leaned back against

windowsill, he would tell her the stories

eyes heavily-lidded and half closed,

until she begged him to stop.

she was eighteen when she decided

she wanted to marry

a boy from benghazi.

green book.

2011-03-13T22:43:00.000-05:00

i do not need a book

to tell me that i am a woman,

that each month i bleed,

that my body can nourish life,

or that men are not like me.

i do not need your book

to teach me what freedom is,

or slavery for that matter.

we have already

tasted both.

your book is burning

in every street.

and libya is coming for you.

life has always affected me more than death.

2011-03-04T23:14:00.000-06:00

i can watch a man die. i cannot watch his daughter cry for him.

rels 2130

2011-03-01T21:13:00.001-06:00

my professor has a name i've never heard before. you can't find the meaning on google. no one knows where he's from. he wears bow-ties and has a three-legged dog, and he told us this:

"no one wants to be loved in abstract. really, does anyone want to hear, 'you're my heart and soul - i can't live without you. sort of.'"

bayda to ghadamis.

2011-02-28T01:14:00.000-06:00

boy, in jeans and keffiya,

wound tight around neck,

the aircraft can't stop you,

aiming from sky at those above them,

how could they shoot you down?

you have eyes like bomber jets

and the mouth of a revolution,

you march like free men,

fight like soldiers,

and die like martyrs

brother,

i saw them shoot you down,

through grainy, third party video

on my shiny laptop screen,

the air was cool and i was comfortable,

i saw you bleed, as they dragged you

towards home, i cried for an hour

imagined your mother,

young-faced, and grey-haired,

forced to clean blood

that should've never

been spilled in her lifetime

imagined you clutched to her chest,

"weledi, weledi"

i hear someone in the background say

he was only eighteen

we count shuhood like baby teeth,

and your sister's mouth is almost empty.

you are the face of a revolution,

shrugging off terror,

i watched you dance under bullets,

the country became free

the day we strangled fear,

leaving her corpse blue and mottled,

at the feet of the regime.

this is a revolution.

ameen.

bombs over benghazi

2011-02-22T15:35:00.001-06:00

it makes me ache that you,

thirteen and long-limbed,

still pale from winter,

had to learn

to wash a body.

please,

2011-02-19T00:28:00.002-06:00

don't let me dream of dead girls tonight.

allahu akbar. subhan'allah. alhamdulillah.

2011-02-11T10:34:00.001-06:00

who's next?

for my children

2011-02-07T01:16:00.000-06:00

i want to water my daughters

so they blossom into modest women

with patterned skirts and bright scarves

covering hair the color of coffee grounds,

tucked away for a wedding night.

i want my sons to grow like trees

spine and knees like oak trunks,

unbendable

with laughter like leaves

and hands like branches,

always reached out,

offering protection

from vast sky

i want them both to speak like breezes

and love like lightening, need God like

a river, water to quench a dry tongue,

to think fiercely and live happily,

a mother's prayer for her children

to remember the texture of their father's hair

and color of their mother's teeth

i want them to own memories

entwined with the smell of cantaloupe

and rainy nights, i want the feel

of sticky mango juice

to make them smile

i want honey to

make them remember their skin

and what it is there for

i wish for them warm springs

and cool falls, forgiving summer sun,

and kind winters

rain like powdered sugar, made to dance in

and only one hurricane,

to ensure they praise God for it all,

every day.

before their birth,

their conception,

before their mother had her hands henna'd

by singing women,

or even met their father's eyes across a room,

this is a prayer for them.

tear gas and the people without riot masks.

2011-01-30T23:21:00.000-06:00

I have a lot of things I want to say about the power of boys with stones and girls in skirts with knees like anchors, but I don't know if I can find the words. They're there, on the tip of my tongue, flirting with my lips, but keeping coy.

I want to talk about the raw sores left by rubber bullets, and the broken vessels that the tear gas leaves in your eyes, making you look like the morning after your father's funeral. I want to talk about an emotion that makes lost voices and broken fingers worth cheering through: hope.

Someone once told me, "Hunger will put the people in the streets."

Hunger for food. Revolution. Change.

Hope is an odd thing. Fragile and tremendous, it spreads like wildfire, lighting breasts and pits of stomachs and undersides of tongues like California hillsides in July. It flickers until it spits, and spits until it roars; until it is an unstoppable tide roaring over villages and cities, towns and mountains. It is a quick-spreading thing, hope.

When Tunis fell, hope flickered through, quick as a thief in the night. Come and gone, so quick we almost missed it. Calls from person to person, spreading out like spider webs, spreading the word: "S'maati? S'maati shin sar fi Tunis? Did you hear? Did you hear what happened in Tunis?"

"They kicked the President out - out! He's gone! Al-shabab! The people! The people kicked him out - he's fled!"

"Who's next? Who do you think it will be? Algeria? Egypt? Allahu akbar! Alhamdullilah. Praise God. Praise God."

Tyranny is a terrible thing. And after awhile, people forget they are under it.

So for my brothers and sisters in Masr, Tunis - Jordan, Syria, Libya - Allah maak. God be with you. There is hope. Boys with rocks have been winning wars for centuries. Girls have been anchoring their knees to their homelands for millennium. There are some things worth rioting for.

boys throwing stones.

2011-01-29T23:06:00.000-06:00

they always see delinquents.

i see david.

i don't remember

2011-01-08T00:44:00.001-06:00

exactly when i stopped missing you.

hanai

2010-12-28T22:02:00.000-06:00

my grandmother's name was muna

they called her mna,

she had eyes greener

than the mint she pressed

into her husbands tea,

hands small as a child's,

stronger than a soldier's

five foot, maybe

if she stretched

she was

a woman

married a boy she knew her entire life,

a pilot's wife, ear constantly tuned towards the radio

for signs of accidents in the sky

slept with her head on his shoulder every night

she was

a wife

life spent in a constant cycle of

kneading, nourishing, and loving

birthed nine children,

two who's faces the next moon

never saw,

countless others

lost in utero,

she loved them all,

painfully

she was a mother

never learned to read,

but taught her daughters

a woman must learn to do everything

told time by the way the light

hit the wall

worked with her elbows, knees,

and neck

broke her back

to erect the spine

of a home

she never slept in

taught her daughters

to love with their entire body

but her sons

she loved from a place

low in her stomach,

that roared up and welled over,

that stretched across oceans,

riding on tides

hard and deep,

some nights they still say her name

in their sleep

she was amazing

i never knew her

i only have the stories

about her eyes,

how they were

green

greener than the na'anah

she put in her tea,

greener than the sea

in winter

greener than the grass

in the month before summer,

when the sun comes to make everything dry

i only have the stories

about how her hair

was two black braids that hung to her waist,

and the way she sat when she ate.

i never knew her

so i wrote a poem

so i could feel

like i know her

my grandmother's name was muna

and they called her mna

i wish i knew you

2010-12-25T23:16:00.001-06:00

before everyone else thought you were beautiful.

marley.

2010-12-19T23:49:00.001-06:00

note: despite what it seems, this is a poem about the boy, not the musician. be who you are, loves. don't throw your life away trying to be something else.

-

nights spent in a smoky room,

blunt in hand,

surrounded by ugly people

you think it will make you like him,

like the drugs will channel through you

and possess you with talent, raw,

like the chemicals will filter into your system,

illuminating like morning light through a stained glass window

and teach your fingers how to play,

your voice how to sing,

like your brain will rework itself

into something better than it is

you are not bob marley

you are just a boy

who smokes too much.

and marley was just a man

who wrote music

and made mistakes

and smoked too much

he was not god

it is dangerous

to imitate an artist,

they are the most unreliable

kind of beautiful

artists crack themselves open

to see what pours out,

examine ribs for lost messages

carved by swallowed demons,

trapped, and open veins

to see what their pulse looks like

like most poets, he never learned

to love right

made music

that he loved like a woman,

too hard

to be healthy

you are a boy

in a room

with a joint.

you

know

nothing.

marley turned his soul inside out

trying to find a way back to trenchtown

he was a poet.

he was a musician.

he was an artist.

he was beautiful.

and you are just stupid enough

to think it was worth it.

cobra

2010-12-15T23:35:00.001-06:00

you were my intoxicating malady,

an exotic allurement,

captivating me,

from conception to completion,

a dangerous intimacy.

you were the pied piper,

and your flute played my

siren song

resting obediently in your basket,

i swayed to your hiss

like a dancer,

using dimmed lights

to hide her face

naive enough to look past your fangs,

until they pierced me,

your guile around me like a vice,

constricting conscious

more than consciousness

you are reptilian.

the music stopped,

and you swallowed me whole.

when they're with you, they're with you.

2010-12-14T17:33:00.001-06:00

but they won't be with you for long.

RIP my Prince. My sweet, sweet boy.

2010-11-24T11:27:00.000-06:00

I will choose to remember you like this. And I wish I could write something more eloquent, something more deserving to celebrate your life that you would have so easily given for me, to describe how innocently you loved without asking for anything back, but right now, I can't.

Right now I will work on remembering you like this. With your head out the window. Or in my lap.

Rest now, my boy, in peace.

horcruxes or hallows?

2010-11-19T02:11:00.001-06:00

beautiful and dark. raw and whimsical. left me aching.

boy in the cupboard under the stairs no more, but a man with five o'clock shadow and the dull ache of loss, with hands that have felt a body seep life and eyes that have seen too much.

so young, to be fighting so many.

i watched until my eyes hurt.

RIP Dobby.

2010-11-17T16:21:00.002-06:00

"Parents," said Harry,

2010-11-13T14:18:00.000-06:00

"shouldn't leave their kids unless - unless they've got to."

.

2010-11-13T13:30:00.000-06:00

"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."

i literally shivered to the tips of my toes the first time i read this.

Kingsley was striding

2010-11-13T12:13:00.001-06:00

backward and forward, glancing up at the sky every time he turned. Harry was reminded of Uncle Vernon pacing the living room a million years ago.

-

it really does feel like a million years ago.

"Our best chance is to use decoys.

2010-11-13T11:52:00.000-06:00

Even You-Know-Who can't split himself into seven."

There was a brief silence

2010-11-13T11:40:00.000-06:00

in which the distant echo of Hagrid smashing down a wooden front door seemed to reverberate through the intervening years.

-

who else remembers it?

peeling pomegranates

2010-11-10T21:06:00.002-06:00

it was like giving birth,

in that cramped apartment,

fingers sifting through soft

flesh for ripened seeds

it was like committing murder

on that scratched wooden floor,

in your underwear,

ruby juice like blood, spattered

against lower stomach,

right above where your womb

would be

would be.

it was like leeching life,

to lick it from your fingers,

it was like the most lonesome

kind of death, to fall asleep,

curled into yourself on that floor,

room, heart and abdomen empty,

thighs, teeth, and hands

stained red.

the almost girls. (extended)

2010-11-09T12:03:00.000-06:00

we are the almost girls

the not quite girls

the nearly, nearly

just right girls

the all but girls,

the close to girls,

the somewhere in the ball park girls,

the just about girls,

the not quite

without a doubt girls,

the mostly, on the verge of,

not far from girls

the somehow, somehow

never just right girls.

almost girls

2010-11-08T22:41:00.001-06:00

we are the almost girls
the not quite girls
the nearly, nearly
just right girls

i should thank you

2010-11-07T15:31:00.002-06:00

for disillusioning me, but right now it only makes me sad.

your mother's tragedies.

2010-11-02T10:43:00.002-05:00

dried up lakes remind her of her mother

and she doesn't want to be the girl

who wrote a thousand poems

for a boy she never met

eating grapefruit

makes her think of her mother's mouth,

of lipstick left in the tube too long,

and she doesn't want to spend her life

missing a face she's never seen

her mothers hands smell like bleach,

nails chipped,

and she doesn't want to wake up one morning,

with her mother's tired face

and yellow eyes,

still in love with ghosts of men

from her mother's past.

the grey box.

2010-10-27T10:17:00.000-05:00

she always loved his hands,
warm and strong and sure.

she flung herself
from the peak of
the highest roof in town
the morning after
that was all they could
send back to her.

trinket stories.

2010-10-27T10:15:00.000-05:00

she knew she would love him
for the rest of her life
when he tipped her wire basket
onto the floor, rings, bracelets,
spilling across the carpet in
flashes of green stones and
purple plastic, red metal
rusting brown, and said,
"tell me the stories."

.

2010-10-27T10:13:00.001-05:00

and for a time,

it was good.

so good.

for a time.

sweet summer skin.

2010-10-27T10:12:00.000-05:00

i think of you when pineapple turns my mouth sore,
the corners of my lips raw, i think of how
you would press your fingers into them,
they would taste like summer,
skin turned sweet.

layla wa majnun.

2010-10-24T21:11:00.002-05:00

you called me your layla,

the famous love from days

of old, your layla

and now, i spend each night

in a boundless, delicious

frightful state, terrified

that you will be my majnun.

i pass by these walls,

2010-10-24T13:18:00.003-05:00

the walls of layla.

expiration date: sooner than you think

2010-10-22T23:02:00.002-05:00

sometimes, i open the fridge

and stare at its contents,

the milk two days too old,

the pumpkin i've been meaning

to make something with.

sometimes, i stand at the window

and stare at the light turning yellow,

and then pink, and then blue

sometimes, i look at someone

and my eyes stay there,

their face pulling like a magnet

sometimes i hear a word,

or a phrase,

or a part of a sentence,

and i feel like i'm on

the precipice of something,

wildly, hugely, completely important.

then it passes.

i close the fridge.

i have bruises on my body

2010-10-19T21:53:00.000-05:00

left by ghosts,
and blood under
my nails
that is not mine.

whispers in my
ear, from
voices
i've never
heard

and a taste
in my mouth
that feels
like smoke.

i like things

2010-10-19T21:50:00.001-05:00

to be a little bit ugly sometimes.

the day sorrow came.

2010-10-15T22:24:00.002-05:00

It was nearly fall the afternoon Sorrow came to stay. Not to visit, but to stay. She didn't come unprepared, on the fly, with dusty hair and travel-worn shoes. She came for good, with bags in each hand packed to brim, ready for any occasion.

Trousers and blouses and house clothes. Sequined dancing dresses and skimpy underthings, exercise shoes and shiny stilettos. A bag of its own just for bracelets and bangles, pendants and rings. Pretty things to dangle from the lobes of her ears and rest against the slope of her chest.

Black. All of it in black. Black, black, black.

The pencil she lined her eyes with and the powder she brushed over her lids. The bottles, slender and graceful that held her perfume, the heaviness of each scent betraying its delicate bottle. Every item of her clothes and every piece of her jewelry. Every shoe in her trunk. Black.

She came at the time of year when the wind was still undecided whether to blow warm or cool. She came at the time of day that the sky was just splitting open, into reds and oranges, like a peach, bitten into after one day too long on the counter. She came at the hour when the whole farm, for miles either way, smelled faintly of old peaches. She came that year when your sister's cheeks reminded you of peaches, round and blushing bright.

She came that time of year before the fall, when the air smelled like peaches and the sky looked like peaches, right after the last drop of sticky peach juice dripped from your sister's face to her hands to her feet.

She came without invitation or welcome, with her black bags and black clothes and nothing was ever the same. None of you were ever the same. Right as the last drop of juice hit the dust, she came strolling into the yard. Her heavy perfume drowned out the smell of peaches, and it never came back. The sky always seemed to go from blue to black.

honeysuckles.

2010-10-15T22:09:00.000-05:00

She said she smelled honeysuckles.

"There are no honeysuckles."

"I smell them."

"Well, there aren't any." He followed her through the winding bushes anyway. "It's way too cold. It's not time for honeysuckles - you're out of your - "

He stopped as she turned around to face him, pale blossom in hand. He watched her pull the thin stem easily from the flower, and held it up to his lips.

He felt confused, like a teacher had marked him wrong on a test, when his answer was right.

"It's - they can't be growing now - it's almost December - "

When she saw he wasn't going to take the stem, she brought it to her own mouth and sipped the syrup easily off.

She let it drop to the ground and reached for another, shrugging as it if was simple, when it wasn't.

"They're confused too."

"don't get taken."

2010-10-12T16:27:00.002-05:00

best advice i've ever received.

10. 10. 10.

2010-10-10T11:37:00.001-05:00

like a heartbeat.

"I am not worried, Harry,"

2010-10-09T12:45:00.002-05:00

said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."

"It's . . . it's magic, what I can do?"

2010-10-08T23:33:00.000-05:00

"What is it that you can do?"

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."

-

Chill bumps raise like braille on my arms every time I read this.

"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man!

2010-10-08T23:26:00.000-05:00

This pain is part of being human - "

"THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!"

Already finished with the book, but I neglected to post this bit as I was reading through it. It had me in furious tears the first time I read it.

"Remember Cedric.

2010-10-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

Remember, if the time should come when you have to make the choice between what is right and what is easy. Remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."

"I'm fine," said Harry,

2010-10-04T21:06:00.000-05:00

wondering why he kept telling people this, and wondering whether he had ever been less fine.

"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black.

2010-10-01T23:13:00.000-05:00

"DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"

I'm beginning Goblet of Fire now, but that was sticking with me. Felt like it needed sharing.

hello, all. :)

2010-09-30T23:26:00.000-05:00

i'm currently reacquainting myself with the boy in the cupboard under the stairs. it's been a lovely few days.

when i was eleven and in the cupboard under the stairs, he made the dark seem a little less scary. but i guess some books are like that.

join me?

she was my baby.

2010-09-28T22:20:00.003-05:00

and i would give you to have her back.

jumbalaya dreamin'.

2010-09-26T23:19:00.000-05:00

i closed my eyes and

pretended that I

was in louisiana,

closed my eyes and

breathed in sticky air

humid and hot

weighty with hope, and

thought of new orleans,

turn of the century

closed my eyes, and

listened to that hum,

pretended that creole boy

was singing just for me.

eighteen

2010-09-26T23:16:00.000-05:00

looks just like this.

he told her

2010-09-14T19:51:00.002-05:00

that a mother will give up on her daughter, but not her son.

this land.

2010-09-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

this is my land.

i have no deeds, no certificates

no men in dark suits witnessed me

sign my name to stiff sheets of paper,

weighed down with life's work.

but this is my land.

and i claim it.

i was not forced, beaten, chained

traded, enslaved, betrayed

pushed out and pulled at

until cheeks caved

inward on themselves, until wills did,

giving up and turning grey.

but this is my land

and i claim it.

this is not the land where my

father's fathers laid first foot

and my mother's sweat was spilled,

where my ancestors afterbirth was dropped

into soil,

but this is my land.

and i claim it.

because here, my head was raised

these stars, my eyes have gazed

as hey turned and changed

from infants baby blue to toddler's hazy grey,

to young woman's soft brown

i know these stars

i know this moon

i know this grass

i know these trees

and this is my land.

i hate when you make me lose faith in people.

2010-08-30T02:33:00.000-05:00

but then somebody always gives it back.

i am not my hair.

2010-08-30T00:08:00.000-05:00

i am not this skin. i am not your expectations.

horsemen.

2010-08-24T22:34:00.000-05:00

wrote this almost five years ago. found it and smiled, even though it's not that happy. enjoy. :)
-

i will follow where you go
life, death, or limbo
come hell or high water,
the horsemen of death

look fear in the eye,
and smile.

"you cannot conquer a mountain,"
she told me one day,
"but you can conquer yourself."

so i will follow where you go
life, death, or limbo.

this is not your star spangled banner.

2010-08-24T13:53:00.000-05:00

i'm not here to play with you,

i'm just trying to relay to you

the reality

of what it is that we go through

and i shouldn't say we, but i do

because thankfully,

i'm still relatively free

to go and say and do like i please

the worse it ever comes to

is looks and comments on the streets

and random selections at airport security

and you won't see it on tv,

but there are places where children

once ran in the streets

and i say ran, because now

instead of bare feet

bombs rain down like

stars over the sea

women wail over

those same children's feet,

now not connected to anything

so while they may look like me,

same bridge of nose, same

color of teeth,

while they might talk like me

and pray like me,

and come from me,

they are not like me

and i shouldn't say we.

because at least i know

what it's like

to be a little bit free.