She deliberately hid her heart
Left pieces of it in different places
At the peak of mountains
At the bottom of a cliff
On the last page
Of the last book in the series
Entangled in the silence
Of the blank spaces of a poem
Where most were too weak to make it

The sky remembers Palestine
It remembers the bread and cheese
The morning call to prayer
The orchards of olive trees
The Earth remembers
Deep roots older than the sea
Wounds that taste like lovers
Litter the soil
The wind remembers
Free Palestine
The song carries over checkpoints
And reminds the flowers
Where they come from

Perhaps it would have been better to let go whilst we were still whole
To lose something beautiful and cherished
Than to break piece my piece
And watch what we had
Turn sour in our hands

Now I'm just another defeated lover
Watching the world move on

without us

I loved you more than I hated myself

I have been writing out my love story for a long time
Thinking my heart was an original flame
The first of its kind to burn
The first to extinguish so terribly
I've wanted to differentiate myself
To carve out my happiness
And write my name all over it
The cult of the individual is alive
And I want to be the protagonist
I want an entire novel
A series
And I want it all to matter

The night is arrogant in its possession of the moon
I have the innocent dreams of a sinner
There's a moon of my own
With whom I met by chance
How beautiful is God's mercy
The undeserved deprived of waiting
Maybe I had faught with some past memories
And swore not to make any more
I watch from a distance
Smile for his existence
Let the light in his eyes
Carry my heart
To a future I am powerless to deny

I remember dancing at your wedding
To the sound of gunshots chasing into the sky
The dancefloor hungry for our dabke
Feet pounding in unison
Splitting the Earth open
Outside in the streets
We grew up in
We stamped with hope
But our chained arms around each other's shoulders
Was a wave of grief for the dead
For your father
Abdallah
Everyone loved him so
For your brother Khalid
And his son Saif
It was too early for them to go
At my wedding the line of dancers so short
Our feet battered the ground in accusation
For all the ones it swallowed
I pummeled the unfaithful soil
And on my way home
I hung the swing we played on
Many moons ago

We are like a pomegranate
Sweet sometimes sour
Slow to peel
Thick skins
Hard to digest
We come apart bit by bit
Gently
Lest we squash under the pressure
And all the lovely juice go to waste
There's so many seeds
Of love, care, secrets and doubts
So many fears
Grit between our teeth
Mother we are exotic
And foreign
Expensive yet stubbornly brown in the sun
Refusing to be sold
For price has no meaning
Loyalty does
We colour the ones who are worthy
Bold and bright
The hues of a rose

I know my success chokes in your throat
I know my happiness burns your eyes
I know evil things labelled with love
And people who want my demise
I hear the words you use to disguise
The past you have with me
And how you shove the rewritten version into the world
At an attempt to hide all things vile
You think I have forgotten?
That I believe your lies?
But I let you spin your tale
And choose to keep you nearby
So I can see your traps in front of me
And side step everytime

I'm a thousand miles away
In a country green and bright
But the paths of my mind
Take me back to our streets
Time to time
I kept in touch with many
And I know all the news
I've heard the post office was painted
And Ahmed has retired
His son has accepted his fate
And works in his father's butchers
I heard Saleh's chickens were eaten
The wolf came through the gate
I know Hannan still begs outside the markets
And Ali still sings as he drives his bus
Bilal married Arwa in August
And the caterers caused a fuss
I know that Hamsa street was freshly paved in June
From this country
I miss the clear sight of the moon
I still have many questions
And I long to visit home
Do the police still pick on the poor?
Does Fatima still send lunch to the neighbours every Friday noon?
Do you still struggle to sleep at night?
Does the future still plague your thoughts?
Have you left home in the early hours of the morning
And fallen asleep on the beach with anyone else?
Did you take another to Juju gardens then park on sunset drive?
When they gossiped about me at Khalti's cafe
Did you put a stop to the rumours or let me take all the blame?
I know the ways of our people
The woman is always put to shame
I'm in a land so green and bright
Here everyone is so welcoming and kind
But the stars look so dim at night
And I miss the dusty heat of our country
And it's people too
But more than anything
I miss you

Excuse me a moment
Let me leave your bed

Keep your dreams
From your dark smouldering eyes
I am taking my leave

Putting all my interests at risk
I am taking back my self respect

If anyone asks don't hide my faults
Tell them I was a liar
Tell them I was selfish
In life, I always stood alone
That I made many promises
But didn't fulfill any
Tell them
If there was ever a war with your name
You'd find me, a coward, in first line of defence

I shout your name in the dark void of my mind
It sung back the names of the dead
My tongue tastes like shame
I wish I could be who I was
When the days began with your smiles
And the nights ended with your breath
But my heart is a mess

In the dreamy and ***** labor of my imagination
I imagine and reimagine us in every light
I gasp
and you sing back all the things I crave
While I write a duet with my tongue on your neck
The distinction of right and wrong
has always been a question of fire
It burns in my blood
and throbs in my body as you hover above me
And my heart relocates between my legs
You've become a hymn on my lips
An obsession
Which turns into panic
The moment you leave the cradle of my arms
I still can't figure out why
Without you
Time collapses
And in my heart there is an unripe grief
Soft and slowly rotting
Until your hips can fit onto mine
Until my lips can swear upon the firm softness of your skin
And claim you as mine
Call it love
But I call it dangerous
A terrifying risk
Of ruining everything
For a few stolen moments of time
We will not get what we want this way
And I want it more than anybody
I want to fly with you and keep flying
I want my hands to knot in your hair
Like roots making you my home
I want each time we kiss full on the mouth to be tender and bold
With possession
Not like a haven we desperately built with crumbling chalk

I walked all day and all night
To arrive in a foreign land
Only to cry at the closed doors of hope
I lay in the bed of the poor
Most people dream of a future
But my dreams are mostly memories
Surrounded by a sea of strangers
I dream of familiar faces I used to know
My barber Hassan
He didn't know the meaning of small talk
When I sat in his chair
Along with cutting my hair
He would sweep away the gripes of daily grind
My neighbour
Auntie Faatimah
Visits me often during my sleep
She's always sat at our dining table
In her flamboyant dress
Her scent
Floral and sweet
Would surround the air like an everlasting hug long after she'd squeezed me in her arms
"Ali, What do you think of Halwah?"
Mother and her share a knowing glance
And that's where it always ends
What does it matter what I think anymore?
I think of her
And that's all that we'll ever be
A thought
Not even destined to be buried beneath the same dirt

It felt like clinging to the mast
of a tiny boat
in a storm stricken sea
We lay naked
penitent
and punished
Like the depictions of atoning sinners
The truck jostled
and hurled our bruised skin against eachothers
When they found us
it was cold and dark
Stood in the open plain space
we shivered
as tendrils of panic escaped in whimpers
in bodies
huddling together
trying not to be seen as one
When I could finally speak
It was a tangle of words
They fell confusingly
some desperate to escape
some of them trying to hide
All of them needing to be heard
but too embarassed to be seen
From that moment on
the distance between all humans would become vast
At some point silence will stretch between us
and I'll always feel all alone
Some would say that I have disconnected from reality
but I had connected too much

Yesterdays walk with me
Lick my wounds
Remind me of words I don't want to remember
Shelter my present with echoes of loving whispers
Those in passing
Make me laugh
Laugh at me
Make me ashamed
Scare me in my dreams
Stop me from doing things
I have taken the path of a cursed woman
What of my words now?
What of a goal? Woebegone all that is not you
It would be a lie to say that I don't still ache for you
That my life will not pass in suffering
What of the soul I sold
For the magic of us felt too much to not believe in?

In the C- section of 1990
You'll find me in the belly of July
Surrounded by the heat
Of dreams
I am still in debt
To the lessons of first love
I have yet to greet the pain of some wounds
And some I am still filling
My eyes are still observing abstinence
I am stuck in my mourning period
Let a moment pass
And let me think
About if I want to be ruined again...
When the casket of memories I have of her
is lifted from my mind
When the nights don't remind me of the promises we could not keep

I asked questions which did not have answers
And befriended those who could not keep relations
I died in his eyes
But swallowed them whole
To live in the refraction
That caught me in them

Why does your heart dip
And the Earth tremble beneath your feet
When God is dangling above your breastbone
And frozen at your lips?
Why can't you sleep
And why do the sins of others worry you so
When the name of God is in your name
And the commands of God your script?

It's as if I am the dread
Of the curtains being lifted
It's as if I am speaking to the deaf
And awaiting an answer from the mute
It's as if I am being asked to
Shed tears for a pain I did not endure
A departure I did not see
Tell me does it make a difference
Whether I speak or remain silent?
Tell me
Do you ever miss me?
And if you do? Does it trouble you
Does the moon remind you that I too
Live under the same sky?
Does the dark make you think
That I dream of the light?

If a portrait:
then only the kind you won't see in the mirror.
If a house: then not too warm
lest there be reluctance in leaving.
If plans:
then only those which can be changed.
If belongings:
then just so much that can be carried.
When the time comes to leave,
who told you that you are permitted to keep what you own?
To settle in?
Who told you that it would last forever?
Did no one ever tell you,
that nowhere in this world
is home?

She hates winter
How quickly the dark hides shadows
And rubs away the outline of things
But isn't it beautiful when the snow
Holds each footprint accountable?
Isn't it lovely how there's no pressure for anything to grow?
How lovers hold eachother closer
Winter is the breath proving its existence

I am trying to tell you
The world is beautiful
That you have forgotten something very important
Like quiet mornings
And the smell of a home cooked meal
Light traffic
And the wind against your face
You live in a land of
Hypothetical myths
Contained in scenes set in libraries
The idea of heaven
Does not mean there are things in this world you could never bring yourself to love
Heaven is a place of all your favourite things on Earth

I tell you my body is loosening at its seams
I feel my youth leaving me
Was it your doing or was it fate's?
I was once as gold as honey
The same gold as wildfire
I am a book
Whose pages your have read over and over again

When I wished for us upon a shooting star,
I wonder where it went?
Do you know what a shooting star is?
A clump of dust
That's all that falls from the sky
But dust gives birth to trees
Do you remember the trunks we carved our names into?
I wish we had held onto eachother the way the roots of those trees held onto the ground
Our names, once a lover's poem
Became nouns decorated into bark

There are truths that are yet to be learnt
The ones that are written into every atom of this world
Like the shadows that will always belong to you no matter how much you don't recognise them
That I am yours and you are mine
We are a whisper that will shatter the silence
And ripple years into the future

Nothing sung in the covers of the night
Has made it out alive
There is no such thing as lying awake in peace
I think of how
I can be written into the lines of your palms
And that the sound of forever could be your voice
I think of putting my breath in another's body
Of trusting my name in his mouth
I think of being careful with you
Of doing everything right
So that we can see just how many heavens
Were made for us

I have been built from a mother's sighs
and the blame of being a woman
Moulded by history
And all its broken pieces
I have been taught to carry them all
To feel their weight
And I did
Until I came apart like Jenga blocks
Piece by piece
Then all at once
Until it all was too much to hold
Even then
My tongue was supposed to be a refuge for secrets
I was to fear banishment
And pay heed to omens
Yet I have never wished to inherit anyone but myself
A monster of my own making
Ripping holes in the night
I was born for exile
To die
And be remembered
Not like a ghost on the shelf
But like the tears of the grateful
Like the roots of a plant which was displaced
And still it bloomed over and over again

I've grown allergic to mornings
of absent welcomes
the ones where I come alive
conscious to your existence before my lids open
only to face a reality of you not being here

My friend
My well-wisher
Do not curse me
With a long life
Do not make this prayer
Leave me in my state
I am a widow of love
Let this poison **** me quickly
Do not drag out my pain

It was
a little love
a little helplessness
I threw my life away
What kind of man was I?
a person killed me and left me alive
But I gave up on life
there was a person who came and went like a season
but I was not a farmer who could save a dying land
I was not a boat who could sail the storm
I wish everyone could know
that I am open truth
what kind of man was I?
to hold that stranger close to me I had to embrace the crowd
to stop the reminder of the unfaithful
I've had to raise my hands to the mirror
What kind of man was I?
I've had to die
to prove that I was alive

I have found peaceful sleep on concrete floors
Where my desires have been needs
And had restless nights on feather soft beds
Where dreams of wants have piled with greed
They ask how people become mad
And I tell them
Look, like this
By doing business with dreams