There's a part of me that wants to die
So that when my lungs are fighting for air
I remember how to live.

And in that moment I'll plead my case
With words I can no longer form,
And whispered prayers I cannot speak

Because I'm dead,
Not just on the inside, but completely
Gone.

People will wipe their tears, throw away
Dry Kleenex tissues and quickly abandon
The memory of my human form.

I'll live in a cramped box with two angels
Who quiz me, run tests on my soul,
The only logic in liquid air, sometimes ice
When the ground freezes, and the moles
Dig deeper, using my bones to dig further still.


When I traced the wires
On the fence between my playground and
The wilderness in my hometown,
I didn't know what it meant to truly die.
Because as a child I felt dead when I was
Unappreciated or unseen

Little did I know, little that I was,
If I died, that's what I would forever be.

This part of my day is called
A Fistful of Muddy Mushrooms

Because I feel like the embodiment of
something edible, yet poisonous;
Pure, yet filthy, putrid, covered
in the refuse of plants that die.

Maybe they should have refused
to die,
Maybe they should have
Tried
to reach their leaves up and up
until
an ant at the bottom felt
like they were BIG ENOUGH
And a giant thought they were just the
right size for dinner salad,

Because when I speak,
My heart strangles my vocal chords,
And my words sound much less of the
perfect
role model I really am.

How could I not be?

I serve young minds and cater to
small minds,
Much smaller than those they serve.

No one told me that growing up would
R.I.P the arms off my former child self,
Dangle the appendages in front of me,
while I watch monster after monster
Eat my flesh. Slowly. Delicately.

Like a dessert.

I wanted to grow up to be a kid.

I got my wish.

At the cost that I
Do Not
Belong
to the good graces of the Good People
around me

and all of us

scattered like leaves on the ground.

when your mouth opens
and my eyes close,
I cannot tell you who I see

because I am not sure if I am dreaming,
dying, or desperately waiting
for the Hands of God and
the hands of time
to kindly rewind to the point when something tiny,
quite small,
took hold of my blood supply,

when someone measurably loved me
six weeks and four days;
someone I knew less time than I knew
the blood stain before him.
or her. it. a clot.

but it was never that to me. right now
two tiny invisible hands, residing in my residual pain,
the recesses of my mind,
took us, you and I, separate entities now,
and pushed us back:

my eyes brimming with tears, your sighs coercing the silence.

someone's satisfied sky cloud moon sun stars wind earth fire
smile.
laugh.
tears that flooded the ocean where I stand,

reaching for what was once mine.

the birds didn't tell me.

pushing back your covers, wiping away sleep;
seeing me, or the absence of me--
a virus inhabiting a body, sharing a bed,
a house, a life, a marriage, but
refusing to share that which makes a woman
truly and utterly a woman.

not with you.
because I gave you my posture, the bounce in my stride,
the grin so wide it hurt every time I smiled.
I put on a coat of pounds that warmed the feeble bones:
shattered confidence. broken girl.

would you see me if I listened better?
if I shut my mouth and closed my eyes?
if I let pain push deep within and make the blood
stop the bleeding?

what manual tells a woman how to love
someone she always had, but never really did?
for that young, naive take on romance,
on starry eyed place settings at dinner parties
seen in movies and in upper middle class society--
were those not the conventions for us?

when I said goodbye to my family home,
when the man who gave me my wit, my sharp tongue,
my fast feet, when he closed the door, and I left,
sobbing, pleading to go back in,
where safety cocooned my childhood,
tucked the memories in cardboard boxes,
stacked precariously high in the room that raised me,
trading tears for dance displays in a smudged mirror,
dust settling still.

a new man, a relevant man, he took me away
and educated me on good: "be good."
a good wife is
one who obeys, submits, cleans, cooks, opens, closes,
hungrily, dutifully, like a fish with flakes of food
as invisible companions.

no book taught me to fear self-destruction
or to sense the tide that crashes into fledgling happiness,
not two days old--to rip ripe peaches to a meaty pulp,
letting the juice spread at my shoelaces.

dear __ , I loved you entirely too true.
I lost my heart in strands of your hair, pieces of dead skin
engulfing my pillow case and our old sheets tangled
around sweaty legs, feet, arms scratched raw.

I didn't see that when the papers were inked
you put the parts of my heart once yours
next to your name--signed it away
to some better life,
one with a good wife, a good life,
a child, yard, and a three car garage.

I only got to see briefly what was not
meant to be mine.

I took off my sundress,
dipped my toes in the water,
and submerged my body,
embracing yours steadily,

remembering I am already good,

in the then and in the now.

I say I'm a Muslim, but I can't tell anymore.
I can't tell from what goes in my mouth,
what comes out and hits you on the cheek
worse than a slap, harder than a mere insult.
I'm outraged, but what reason do I have?
On the outside I could be anyone,
and I usually am.
Sometimes I am Puerto Rican, Lebanese, or Black--
a child asked me once, and I just smiled back.

How sweet would it be to take every crayon from the box,
even now that the numbers have multiplied and
what was once simple 8, 12, 24, 36,
has exploded into a million colors with a million names,

to crush them into bitty pieces and swirl the mixture with water;
make it all into One.

so that if we hate another
(what other?)
we just hate ourselves.

I say I'm a Muslim, and I know I am
because when I give up all my frustrations and
my toddler tantrums, and I even give up yoga,
or rather it gives me up, thankfully so,
when I injure my back: I'm grateful for that.
What a knowing presence God is to take away that which harms
and restore that which fulfills.

But even to those who are still hurting
(and I often am)
there are these small remembrances that come
between this onset of tears and the next.
Whether the sun peers through the dusty blinds,
the ones you need to clean again--so soon,
and you see the light stream through, faintly at first,
until you are forced to open your eyes,
to remove yourself from the hate you've stewed in:
how simple is that?

I say I'm a Muslim, and it's a choice
I make every day or avoid until the next day,
even though that day may not be easily given.
And I forget that.
But when I see life slip away from young lives, old lives,

lives not yet born

then I have to remember
that I do not have the answers,
and every time I try to be dictator of my destiny
I fail miserably, miserably, miserably.

And now that I wrote this poem
and I felt myself think, no, truly feel for the first time in a week,
that my robotic expression has melted into a frown that stands
a chance at becoming a smile.

Now that I am human I am a Muslim.
Not perfectly so, but decidedly so.

(In memory Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha)

I walk into a narrow entry way
where the curtains are closed in the room beyond.
I extend my hand, see their eyes, and convert it
into a pleasant, not at all unsettled wave.
hello, how do you do. it states more than asks
because no one wants to share
(even though I really did want to know)

Let's look at my strangeness,
what they call odd,
and I call "different,"
the compliment kind,
like when your parents reward your eccentricities
with boxes of crayons and plenty of paper.
color outside the paper, if you want

What happens when a little girl loved by many
grows up
and becomes a swan smeared in mud with ballet shoes,
untied, ribbons dragging behind,
occasionally tripping not only herself,
but, even worse,
all in her path.

Okay, now to return to the place where I stand,
on the threshold of acceptance and rejection.
No one wins this game, you know.
I will look at the ground, at my shoes,
then at his because what kind of writer would I be
if I didn't look at worn leather sneakers,
black laces frayed at one lace end,
and then write about them?
Who would I be if I couldn't look at a room and a pair of people,
whose curious eyes and glances burn invisible candles
to one pathetic apologetic wick?

In my mind I go back to that moment,
and I blame the clothes I chose
and the words I said and said,
how I fumbled to find a place in the playbook
of How to Please Parents.

I unbuy presents and unworry hours of trepidation.
I unsweat my palms and uncry my tears,
even though I will recry them when I find out
what I am really am,
not even a who,

to those who unsee
me.

once I made a wish.

the penny sent ripples of water circling outwardly,
seeming to spread the potential all around the shallow pool,
when really the magic shot from my lips as soon as I spoke.

I wish for her. or for him. or them.

wishes come true--did you know that?

they always do.

but the pain, their unwanted doppelganger.

it's enough to send me into a sudden burst of tears,
fumbling along the hallway wall, until I reach the doors
of my childhood room.
I grasp at the curtains and collapse,

fallen
forgotten
fallen
forgotten

born again in my sleep.