adrenaline rushes up
zaps between empty synapse
for a minute, a light
Then darkness expansive

hush
talking, whispers
"she's just an alternate"
sleep, wake
white boards scraped pure with
blood red markers and oceans of blue
spinning numbers pretty letters
awful alphabet designating destinies
how ****** up is that
responsibilities dragging down dreams
dreams crash dreams down dreams drown
darkness

adrenaline rushes up
zaps between empty synapse
for a minute, a light
then darkness expands

The walls are made from mossy rough blankets,
buttressed by lumpy pillows.
The flashlight, stolen from the nurse's pocket,
casts yellow moonlight to help him survey the land.  

There's a lot growing in these woods
the roves of blood thirsty IV tubes,
the constant clatter from distant lands
piped through the TV from the next door over.

The prognosis is bad,
but he doesn't care
He's protected here,
in his cradled form,
still exploring even as
he takes his last breaths,
ready to conquer new lands.

I guess I shouldn't be listening to
a spot against the sky's colossal gloom
And land deflated in the evolutionary
past we go
It aimed at windows' frosted panes
this is what it studies in romances
And does anyone know that
the species invents symbols
To the contest otherwise they'll
how oftentimes the day
Has left.

Hello, thank you for using Bangladesh Free. please input the number you are trying to dial.

yesterday i bought a long distance calling card to talk to myself
there, not here, my body straddles two nations
yesterday i rubbed my fading purple stretch marks
i don’t know which language I dream in any more  
yesterday i sat in cold bathwater scrubbing until the purpura bleed
my mothers’ mothers’ mother died in a red river
my mothers mother’s mother birthed a nation
between her bleeding legs
most days I am still, her water’s edge, algae between teakwood toes
yesterday i bought a long distance calling card to tell myself

We’re sorry your minutes have run out. Please deposit ten dollars to continue.

Saturdays we left for epic adventures
Through snow capped Kashmiri mountains
Falling in love amid flowering Swiss fields
Dancing wildly in dimly lit Spanish bars

After two hours we'd stop for Intermission
For fried pakoras and warm ketchup
Or cold chai spiced with Milly Aunty's gossip as old as the stained theater seats

From Monday to Friday we’d work
In offices in warehouses in farmyards
Until late nights became early mornings
And our bowed heads kissed concrete

With our eyes blind & our ears deaf
silently waiting for our stars to come

When his fingers traces the border

Around the ridges of her spine

When his breath falls softly

Around the ridge of her collarbone

She whispers in Arabic to him

The words melting in the heat

Absolving this sweet sin

You know how it is,
the lady tells me,
Growing up with five siblings
In South Philly

The look in her eyes,
mistrust and scorn,
tells me that she doesn't believe me.

I tell her,
Growing up in a third world country,
where you only eat once a day,
where you get electricity for two hours max,
running water even less,
where everything is an unaffordable luxury
You know how it is?

Living in a one room apartment
cohabited by cockroaches,
married by age 16,
dead by age 30,
You know how it is?

Being homeless for so long
that clothes are literally
sewn into skin
You know how it is?

But I don't.
How it is is not a competition,
not a sick, perverse way to measure
who hurts the most, whose life
represents disaster best.

I nod.
It is how.

"You can do whatever you want!
She proclaimed
A thousand eyes peered at her
scornful, disdainful
It was a motto they'd heard often,

"You can" had lived longer
Than any of their friends
It was etched onto their brains
Next to the minimum skills for the low-wage job they held
and the worries about getting food on the table

"Do whatever" echoed
Through broken doors,
Creeped in the cracks between
Grafitti plastered walls,
trash-strewn streets were nothing thrived.

"You want" whispered
In the silence between gun shots,
Hospital beeps, loud televisions, squawking carts
Slapping them awake when they fell asleep after
Working 20 hour shifts

"Just follow your dreams" she continued
(Not that you can anyway because you'll
Never be treated equally, never be given
The attention you need, never be lucky)

"Remember, everything is a choice!"

Options are not included.

This is not a critique
It is not an attack
But if you treat each word as a bullet
Then you are bound to bleed

My mother she tells me
That color does not matter
That white just means that
they are lacking pigments,
science really.

When I come home crying
My mother she tells me
If they mock me,
it's only because they are jealous

When I sit alone at lunch
My mother she tells me
If they avoid me,
It's only because they are jealous

When I have no one to invite to my graduation
My mother she tells me
If they do not come,
It's only because they are jealous

What are they so jealous of?

Words can only be repeated so many times
before they lose meaning
And I'm afraid
That my mother's words
Ring hollow in my ears

They say the world ended
In Grandma’s backyard
On a sultry October noon
When Eve, then two, tripped
Over her own sneakers trying
To get to that perfect red apple
When Adam, then two, saw
Eve’s demise and stepped
Over in his cowboy boots
Sunk his only tooth into that
ripe tender white flesh and
that satisfying bone crunch
Before throwing it away into
A pile of dried dead leaves

The yolk of yesteryear festered
Leaving fewer shoes at the masjid
Fewer smiles at Eid more taut lines
At the corner of Imam's mouth as he
Raised his hands to cover his head and
Cried the Azan to an empty room

Behind him tenuous shadows lurked
Eager to report back to an eagle with
Its talon scratched feudal lines deciding
Who gets to live and for how long
In countries far away where children
Have learned to fear the sky

Some days my bones weigh heavy and I
Can hear creaking down the back of my
Spine it sounds like my grandmother's
Chair in the middle of the night when
She sits in an empty room and knits
A spool of thread jumbled forgotten
Slowly unraveling this body of mine

Some days my bones weigh heavy from
The lives I am not living and from the life
That I am and my chest constricts my
Heart thumps as fast as the hummingbirds
Wings and my ears fill with the sound of  
waves crashing on some distant shoreline
washing dried remains of a moored whale

Today I am carrying my bones forward
Pressing out the air bubbles between
The ligaments and presenting them to
You in a porcelain case bound with a
Scarlet ribbon darker than my blood
So you can wash them with a new light

I don't remember when we stopped
Going to the grocery shop together
When the silence grew too loud to talk over
When I'd stopped trailing after you with the rattling bones of canned soup, clutching the well rusted handles of the shopping cart asyou pioneered your way
Down the discount aisles proud and dusty
Stopping to pick up another sugar laden piece of the American Dream

I do remember my first day grocery shopping alone, squeaking with my empty cart hesitantly down the aisle waiting for you to come and tell me to put back the extra box of chewy chocolate chip cookies
The scuffed tiled floors shone, the fluorescent lighting cast a dull glow and I swear I heard soft angels humming over the white noise from the refrigerators
As I headed home to our white picket nightmare, the blue bags in the backseat shone like medals, subtle victories.

Yesterday we drove down past the
Thickest thickets in the garden state
Listening to whine of The Shins with
Our windows letting in the tiny bugs
Dotting the sky between twilight hours  

You had sticky chocolate hands and
Salt specks from unfinished french
Fries on your plaid shirt tucked into
Your khaki shorts secured with a firm
Brown belt around your small hips

In the rearview mirror I watched the
Sea shore tuck itself into the small
Sea town tuck itself into the green
Fields until darkness enveloped us
And we could not sing anymore

Step out from your silver screen and your golden slippers.
Unwrap your red wedding sari that hangs heavy on your shoulders.
Loosen the blouse that strangles your *******.
Untie the skirt that suffocates your hips.
Throw away heavy golden earrings and necklace.
Wipe off the layers of kohl around your eyes.
Take off your clanging bangles.
Smash them in the ground and watch the colorful mosaic emerge under your bleeding feet.
Anoint yourself with this scarlet bindi.
Rub holud in the spaces you love and the spaces you don’t love yet. This is your holy ground.
This is where you will fight.
This is where you come alive.
Stand still and breathe.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, you are still alive yet.

He did it out of a swamping sense
Of obligation

He did it because if no one else
Was going to do it.

He did it because he had been
Doing it.

Sometimes that was just
enough to keep
going.

Sometimes he wondered
If others thought why.

If they too got lost
looking for an answer that
Felt did not exist.

Truth?
He did it because
He was scared
to stop.

i am a collection of pencil shavings
fickle and fragile with rough edges
that ***** your fingertips and drift

my small colorful piles gather
against the white bed sheets
that you carved into me and left

Hey, how was your day?
(do you still hate me?)

It was okay.
(yes I am still mad)

Anything interesting?
(what can I do to get you to forgive me?)

Nope.
(Not  a single thing.)

Words not said:
I love you,
I can't be mad at you,
I'm sorry.

"Oh Tata you're crazy"
Almond shaped eyes pointing in
Two directions, hair still frizzy from
The static on your two toned wool
Sweater, your glasses askew hanging
Precipitously on the edge of your nose

"You're crazy" I saw again when
You'd show me notebooks filled
Earnest hasty lines naive to prove
Their worth to the world, stumbling
Figures eager to spread world peace

"You're crazy" I repeated as you
Gingerly combed the remaining strands
Of greying hair and tuck your collared
Shirt into your pressed khakis but left
ice cream splotches drying on your arms

Too late I realized that you weren't crazy
I was just too small to it was the world
That was crazy so strict with their lines and rules about who could and couldn't be
And you existed in between spaces yet undefined

It was the type of heat that
Where bodies hungered
filled in the other's hollows
tongue in mouth in ear
the crook of the neck.

The type of heat that
left hair tangled, matted
limp against the back
leaving slick imprints.

The type of heat that
sparked and radiated
that needs no language
for ******.

The type of heat that
Has no introduction
That ends only in
Exhalations

Girl you want some lotion? Here I got you
some cocoa, coconut, shea butter, vanilla bean
We’ll have you smelling like fresh dewdrops
From the morning rain, fresh bread, blessings,

Here let me hold that for you, here give it to me,
Here, can I help you? I got you some soup, some
Chocolate, tampons, gum, hair ties, smiles, hugs,
These are how we keep each other alive.

Girl, you gotta listen to this, it’s gonna change you
Your whole life today, go in a dark room and close your
Eyes and listen, mouth each word until its fits yours

you’re looking fine today, you’re holy, you’re whole.
you’re a whole world. here I am, right here, here
standing here, right here beside you.

I love you like hail dancing
on the closed window pane
fast and reckless and breathless

I love you like the moon chasing
behind the sun's shadow
long and steady and slow

I love you like footprints disappearing
into the cold night's dream
soft and gentle and fleeting

I love you like a fish in water
needs air to breathe
stubborn and hard and senseless

To the author,

Forgive me,
I have loved too deeply
the shadows of your type
I've stolen your creation
Locked it away in a tower
Thrown away the key
Incinerated all ties to you
Starved, it died.

Love,
The Reader

Sometimes at night

quiet you gather
pieces of yourself
and stitch together
The silver moon’s
light and a promise
that it’ll be alright
it’ll be alright later

when the sun rises

When we make love
Your eyes are closed
Later you tell me that
I scare you that I am
The only one whose
Eyes hold no light

Your soft featherlight touch
wrapped around my shoulders
did you know you are made from tears?
Did you know you hold oceans inside of you
that the deepest part of the ocean is not blue
it is purple.

We both have a little bit of purple lipstick on us
twirl around and around until the world is a blur
your soft featherlight touch
wrapped around my shoulders
reminds me I am home in the deepest
part of the ocean.