The summer my cousins return from Nairobi, we sit in a circle by the oak tree in my aunt’s garden. They look older. Amel’s hardened nipples push through the paisley of her blouse, minarets calling men to worship.
It’s not my responsibility to be beautiful. I’m not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.
Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren’t ignoring it. You’re healing; the fresh air can get to it. It’s honest. You aren’t hiding who you are. You aren’t rotting. People can give you advice on how to heal without scarring badly. But on the other hand there are some people who’ll feel uncomfortable around you. Some will even point and laugh. But we all have wounds.
No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.
I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you’re young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate... I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
You haven’t healed, I can tell from how cruel you are.
The only darkness we should allow into our lives is the night, for even then, we have the moon.
You were a city exiled from skin, your mouth a burning church.
Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
Her body is one long sigh.
Did you tell people that songs weren’t the same as a warm body, a soft mouth?
Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning torsos erected on poles like flags? When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces.
Did you tell people that songs weren’t the same as a warm body or a soft mouth? Miriam, I’ve heard people using your songs as prayer, begging god in falsetto. You were a city exiled from skin, your mouth a burning church.
I hope I’ll always believe in love. Even if love shames me and tries to destroy me, I hope I’ll want to start again.
Why do you live in your body like you will be given another? As if it were temporary. You starve it, you let anyone touch it, you berate it. Tell it that should be completely different. You tug at your soft flesh, wish it thinner, wish it gone. You fall in love with those who praise the way it sighs under their hands, but who praises the way it holds up your weight, even when you are falling apart?
Why can’t you see me? Everyone else can.
Your grandparents often found themselves in dark rooms, mapping out each other’s bodies, claiming whole countries with their mouths.
Did they know that you were only human?
Boys are haram; don’t ever forget that.