Sameen Borker |
|
Kaleidoscopic
1.
My white dupatta hangs on a peg
for four straight days, I haven’t prayed
in a while. It gathers dust, shed skin,
the weight of my desires and unsaid
surahs I know by heart. How can I find
myself in prayer, when my heart is
riddled with questions?
My tasbih these days is just this --
Am I enough?
Am I enough?
I have questions about Satan, soured vinegar,
love apples, satin stitches, black kaftans,
do many people use 'fatuous' in a sentence,
sex (lots of questions about sex),
the beggar I met on the night my father
was hospitalised, yellow lentils (how much
water do they need to boil), the broken
china I received as a birthday present.
Above all, I want to know --
If I am really a part of this universe,
my life is stitched into humankind, why
doesn’t the world shiver a little
when I am afraid?
2.
I have a picture of us encased
in my memory. We are standing
at the edge of a lake, our backs turned
against the world. The stories around
us are being retold, the cosmos is being
rearranged. The Gates of Paradise are
closed today and for ever,
someone is making an announcement.
We are unmoved by this. We can hear
the unlocking of doors, the chirruping
of birds, the opening of secret chests,
the cacophony of the truth, and the singing
of songs in languages we don’t know but
can understand. How did we get here?
I want to ask but I don’t. All of it feels
strangely calm, as if the universe is making
way for us to be ourselves in it. I hold on to
your arm lightly like I usually do. Just then
the surface of the water ripples like goose
pimples on skin. You turn towards me and
I look at my wounds healing in your eyes.
3.
In the interim, we will all be lost.
In the interim, there will be promises
of papier-mâché dolls, cracking open
sunflower seeds, greasing the hinges
of doors so there can be sneaking out
in the night, (the possibilities of everything
that can be done after you have snuck out
into the night) and there will be forms,
lots and lots of forms, and maybe even
queues that move along faster than one hopes.
Amid all of this, you will go searching --
for answers,
lost stars,
meaning,
his eyes,
a way to say prayers such that they fall gently
on the silver strands of time --
and then one day, there will be clarity,
a fleeting moment of it.
It will be quiet/
loud/
conspicuous/
inconspicuous.
It will bless you and fly away from you
after touching you gently.
One day, you will know.
Really know.
One day you will discover
that you are made of flowers.
4.
What if we lived in a sealed universe?
One where the knowns and the unknowns
collide to form a substance that has a name.
Maybe it would explain all that is unsaid
between us? Or help me understand why
the knots in my chest won’t go away. For I pick
the fact from the fiction like embroidery threads
out of a tangled thread box. I lay them neatly
side by side, but the colours have bled,
gotten mixed up, and now I cannot say where
it all began or know how to iron it all out.
I cup my palms together, not in prayer,
but to hold my life together, to feel it one time
in the cradle of my own skin, but it spills out
from the gap between my fingers.
I find myself everywhere and nowhere,
beside you, not beside you, having my back
not having my back, under nameless trees and
in the middle of named highways, asking myself
"What am I going to do? Just what am I going to do?"
And every passing day, it makes little sense than before.
What if there were words to demystify
the incomprehensible ways in which I experience
this world? Would I love it a little more?
A little less?
What if I say I will turn you into poetry?
I lie.
You already are.
1.
My white dupatta hangs on a peg
for four straight days, I haven’t prayed
in a while. It gathers dust, shed skin,
the weight of my desires and unsaid
surahs I know by heart. How can I find
myself in prayer, when my heart is
riddled with questions?
My tasbih these days is just this --
Am I enough?
Am I enough?
I have questions about Satan, soured vinegar,
love apples, satin stitches, black kaftans,
do many people use 'fatuous' in a sentence,
sex (lots of questions about sex),
the beggar I met on the night my father
was hospitalised, yellow lentils (how much
water do they need to boil), the broken
china I received as a birthday present.
Above all, I want to know --
If I am really a part of this universe,
my life is stitched into humankind, why
doesn’t the world shiver a little
when I am afraid?
2.
I have a picture of us encased
in my memory. We are standing
at the edge of a lake, our backs turned
against the world. The stories around
us are being retold, the cosmos is being
rearranged. The Gates of Paradise are
closed today and for ever,
someone is making an announcement.
We are unmoved by this. We can hear
the unlocking of doors, the chirruping
of birds, the opening of secret chests,
the cacophony of the truth, and the singing
of songs in languages we don’t know but
can understand. How did we get here?
I want to ask but I don’t. All of it feels
strangely calm, as if the universe is making
way for us to be ourselves in it. I hold on to
your arm lightly like I usually do. Just then
the surface of the water ripples like goose
pimples on skin. You turn towards me and
I look at my wounds healing in your eyes.
3.
In the interim, we will all be lost.
In the interim, there will be promises
of papier-mâché dolls, cracking open
sunflower seeds, greasing the hinges
of doors so there can be sneaking out
in the night, (the possibilities of everything
that can be done after you have snuck out
into the night) and there will be forms,
lots and lots of forms, and maybe even
queues that move along faster than one hopes.
Amid all of this, you will go searching --
for answers,
lost stars,
meaning,
his eyes,
a way to say prayers such that they fall gently
on the silver strands of time --
and then one day, there will be clarity,
a fleeting moment of it.
It will be quiet/
loud/
conspicuous/
inconspicuous.
It will bless you and fly away from you
after touching you gently.
One day, you will know.
Really know.
One day you will discover
that you are made of flowers.
4.
What if we lived in a sealed universe?
One where the knowns and the unknowns
collide to form a substance that has a name.
Maybe it would explain all that is unsaid
between us? Or help me understand why
the knots in my chest won’t go away. For I pick
the fact from the fiction like embroidery threads
out of a tangled thread box. I lay them neatly
side by side, but the colours have bled,
gotten mixed up, and now I cannot say where
it all began or know how to iron it all out.
I cup my palms together, not in prayer,
but to hold my life together, to feel it one time
in the cradle of my own skin, but it spills out
from the gap between my fingers.
I find myself everywhere and nowhere,
beside you, not beside you, having my back
not having my back, under nameless trees and
in the middle of named highways, asking myself
"What am I going to do? Just what am I going to do?"
And every passing day, it makes little sense than before.
What if there were words to demystify
the incomprehensible ways in which I experience
this world? Would I love it a little more?
A little less?
What if I say I will turn you into poetry?
I lie.
You already are.
