Author Archives: m*

her nails were like claws. her nails were like claws at the back of his neck digging for something that wasn’t there. she went back in time, always and forever in a straight line toward a point that could no longer be reached. she was thirsty and tired. she had debts to pay. she caught an eye for a tooth and looked way beyond until she could see no more.

he brought her a yellow rose; it could not have been red. as an answer she pinched the thinnest skin on her wrist—it was the only way for her to discern between what was and what wasn’t. she wondered if the same pathways were taken, if he could kneel under that same tree, and say the same things without her there, but with the thought of her there.

(all these years in the immediacy of a past.)

she didn’t remember any of the lies he told her, nor the lies that she told him; she only knew that they had lied to spare themselves from the flood, and that they would never know it had stopped raining.

it is important to sit in silence, like this. it is important not to talk. otherwise i catch myself looking out of the window, scrutinising the horizon for something out of character, a glitch in the motions, an authorised distraction. maybe i will see something in my line of sight that is worthy enough of a lull, like a car crash or an old lady and her mirror. instead there are only crows and the choreography of waves, and i can’t tell you about it because we are not that close.

when i was a child i would often stand in front of the living room window and stare at the st-lawrence river. given the way the current moved, i could tell where indents and rocks lay hidden underneath the flow. i knew by heart the curvatures of the current, yet fixing a whirlpool point would cause for it to disappear. i would focus and watch a pattern fade, only to see it return in the corner of my eye as soon as i averted my gaze. i found comfort in the permanence of the flow; it told me we can all reemerge from the depths.

i see you looking at me when i look out, i catch your eyes follow my eyes in search of what i am distracted by, and i apologise. it is important to come out, to witness the movements of the bodies, to see lips open and close and talk to each other, for hands to touch, and not our own. it is important to do all of these things, and to sit in silence, around them.

a bite in the scar tissue. it is the size of a dime—a dime that was heated up with a flame and placed on my arm with the sole purpose of burning the skin. in time it became a moon with two stars, or a happy accident in a deliberate act. i remember thinking that it couldn’t wait, that it needed to be done. sometimes it still itches, as if to say: don’t forget.

wounds heal in time, in stages. they slip through crust, mantle and outer core until reduced to ashes in the innermost part of the earth.

you are six years old now. you are the age of a child. you developed the ability to hear and manipulate sounds. you understand what same and different means. you start to grasp the concept of time. you know a couple thousand words, and you would like to write down the words you know, but you only write down your name. you are six years old now, but in the rumpled skin in the fold of my arm you never became more than who you were when you were born.

twines and stalks bending,
regardless of surface heat or texture.

these are your natural boidae
spiraling across the benumbed,
never abdicating.

with clenched teeth and etiolated eyes

whose leather-thorned,
flesh-petaled,
bone-stemmed rose
will you follow?

may those who love us not drown at sea,
may they not suffer poverty in their old age,
may they not pass away without saving their faith.

we got off the train and walked outside. the sea greeted us under the sun. we climbed up the hills of üsküdar, searching for the elusive tomb of a sufi saint. we followed signs on narrow cobblestone streets, left, right, left, until we reached an opening where women secured scarves around their necks. i gathered my hair, took my shawl and wrapped it over my head.

“all the wishes i have wished for here have come true,” the mother said.

we walked up the stairs. women and a lone man were bowing by the high iron fence; some held prayer books under their noses. older ladies offered sweets for the good luck of our hopes, but also for their own. i followed behind the mother until there was nowhere else to go. i cupped my hands and faced the courtyard. “hey, what’s up.” i wondered if the soul of the dead could see through me. my inner talk went on, unprepared, much like all supernatural conversations which are stripped of heartfelt sincerity. perhaps i should’ve thought of something else; ottoman sailors came before me many moons ago and knew of better things to say. mine were the utterances of a skeptic put under an imaginary spotlight, a bad seed contaminating the crop.

in truth there was something i very much wished for. every morning, there lay this thunderous desire in my gut, pulling at my throat. it was a hoarse want, voiced in rumbling whispers only when the moment called for it. if i were to express it too forcefully, i feared it would not unfold. a pox on my wish. yet there was no rhyme nor reason to my fear, as my want was part of the deal, part of the program, within the realm of reality. still, i often wondered about the various gestures that would tip the odds. don’t act just dream, don’t dream just act—such a careful dance to uphold.

it would have made sense for me to wish for this want as i stood by the mystic’s grave, but i didn’t. after two arbitrary amen i swept my hands across my face and i turned around. i studied the cemetery, the stone wall, the roses. i spotted a kitten huddling in a flower pot. i knelt beside him and let all of the love i kept inside flow toward him. i am neither above nor below the matters of the soul. my trust and devotion have simply tended to take on different shapes.

(one sunday in the dead of winter i found myself at the top of the peace tower. there was nowhere else to go; we had run out of escapes. at the top of the tower i wanted to swim under the ice of the ottawa river. i longed to abandon myself to the flow that followed a slope under the stillness of the ice. there was a warm invite to the movements of a river one couldn’t see; a life on the sly. i wished to kill those grey and latent times by way of long and generous impulses. la néréide des neiges, un dimanche.)

under the pale blue skies of the golden horn, i think of snow. i rarely write about snow, for every year winter puts my blood to sleep and haunts my heart with the mysterious aches of a setting sun. in the black and white of winter days and nights, skies are cut into feeble slices. everything succeeds itself in an opaque list without grounds: brittle nails, coils, distant lullabies hummed underwater, salt crystals in the hollow pools of our eyes. the only snow i ever love is the first snow, as it shushes our shivers under blankets of white.

(quiet, it’s snow. so quiet. watch it drop between us two, within our century-old walls, and our lone stairs binding. watch it drop until it stops, just like us, for a pause, and we can see our eyes. maybe you can see mine the same way i see yours, in that moment before they close in the white.)

i will be lucky if i see any snow this year. i do not miss snow, but i miss the struggle. as an expatriate i am allowing myself this febrile, open-wound nostalgia for the motherland.

she rarely took it out of her closet. she dabbled with the idea of wearing it because there was something about long, messy hair paired with a long, messy robe that appealed to her. in her mind’s eye she saw arms as pendulums swaying by salient hip bones and clavicles. if she could stand or lay under low clouds with its fabric draped over her, then all the better—anything to no longer see the sky. sadly she could only recreate part of her vision, for there was nothing straight about the sharp turn of her waist. there she stood, in her heartland. (my heartland, heartland, heartland.) shifting the body, lifting the leg, she made the nicest v’s, a feast for golden eyes, a feast of golden ratios, her bones carefully wrapped in this skin, never jutting. she heard it took time—this shape of dripping sand, endless drive, orientation divided, möbius strip—and indeed she cherished it, but she felt better in a man’s shirt. she kept the piece as both a memory and a reminder; a memory of a church basement, and a reminder of deception.

helene came over.

she brought half a bottle of white wallaroo trail wine. i cooked her perogies with basil and set them up in a circle with a dot in the middle. she tried on my winter coat and it fit her like a glove; i put on my red dress with no goal in mind. the white wallaroo trail wine came and went. i sent a message which lay in limbo, unacknowledged. she did the same. i poured her leftover huntley vineyard wine which i hadn’t yet added to the row of empty bottles on the counter. we concluded that wallaroo trails are better than monkey trails because wallaroos are considerably nicer than monkeys. we layered up and walked to the dépanneur across the 51 stop. we bought dessert—chocolate cookies, an oh henry candy bar and another bottle of wallaroo trail wine. we ate the chocolate. we drank the wine.

i burnt three sticks of incense that night (one amber, two fantasies), with a side of tobacco and carbon monoxide.

we forgot that the purpose of our meeting was for us to go shoot a video with paul until paul called us to remind us that it was over; only we didn’t really forget, we chose to forget.

i dropped gala’s resting soil all over the kitchen counter and in my study. (i cleaned it up.)

zsa zsa pouchkine knocked over helene’s glass and it shattered into a million pieces. (i cleaned that up too.)

we talked about you and you and you and you and mostly how you and you affect me and affect her and affect us. we commemorated you.

at the end of the night, helene said: “remember when we went to the dépanneur?”

and i did, i remembered—i smiled at how long ago it had been.

the room is unbearably light. the sun might as well be hanging from the ceiling. everyone is so beautiful here. men with dark halos dangling from their shoulders, all beards and noses and thick hands. women with high cheekbones and long, sweeping necks. feet angled in appreciation of fragile ankles. voices made rugged by stories told in cigarette smoke. i abandon myself in us, with you there and me here, but we never collide.

when i was young i used to bring a pad and paper with me wherever i went. i sat in a corner and scribbled and wrote in silence, while people cooked and moved and whispered around me. i was never asked to set my prized instruments aside. i was surrounded by everyone i loved and loved less or not at all; and no one questioned or wondered what i was doing or why i was doing it. it was what i did. i kept everyone at a distance that was safe but not irreverent, and i knew when to pause to wash my face, to help set the table, to water the geraniums.

i had a grey-eyed friend, then. she was a few short years younger than me, and we frequently found ourselves in the same rooms, with the same people cooking, moving, and whispering around us. we couldn’t relate to each other, but we knew that we eventually would, in our shared memories of one another. many times as i scribbled and wrote, my grey-eyed friend stood behind me and braided my hair. i covered pages upon pages with ink; she carefully gathered my hair, let it fall, and braided it all over again. we understood that we would never have long conversations, but together we kept our solitudes company. it was a beautiful thing.

they were about to nap: him on the couch, her on the armchair. the phone rang twice, and the father picked it up—it was their son. the son wanted to know if he had to invite his uncle, his aunt and his cousins over when they were in town, or if it was fine to meet them for dinner at a restaurant instead. these little details escaped him, and his wife hadn’t a clue. the father told his son of the proper etiquette, and the son was reassured. they had a long history.