Skip to main content

I Keep On Keeping On

I sit and cry through the night,

wondering if the fire that claimed Aaron

should have taken me too.
Perhaps our collective conscience
burned with him.

I’ve witnessed more deaths in two years
than in a lifetime
though only through a screen.
What does it mean to see it in real time?
How do they smile
while the sky still weeps?

I wonder if love will always be unfinished.
Why no happy-ever-after for me?
I recall the men I have held
each one a lesson in measure:
how much to give,
how much to trust,
how much to lose.

Tonight I want to be selfish,
to weep the rivers dry,
to press every thorn to my mouth,
to taste the blood of roses broken.
I should shield myself,
yet I lean toward the wound again and again.

You deserve all the love in the world, he said.
I wanted to believe him.
I still do.
But he was always leaving
though technically, I left first.
I always do.

Here is the truth:
I cannot breathe.
I cannot eat,
or sleep,
or drink.
All I crave is the spirit I knew
for two brief weeks.

Is that love?
Or only lust,
the flicker of a mind against mine?
How can I love a man
who never once looked into my eyes
as though he saw my soul
yet here I am,
undone for days,
mourning a vow that was broken
long before it reached me.

And still,
I keep on keeping on.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

24

When I was fourteen, we learnt about five-year administrative plans in social studies. They are the plans that governments make to keep the countries on track short-term. I thought if it can work for a nations life, it can also work for an individual's life. I was a big fan of one=many, individual=nation philosophy at that time. My journals from that phase are full of such theories. So in the summer of 2005, I wrote my first five-year plan. I then divided it into yearly goals, then monthly goals and then weekly and so on. I achieved most of the things. The plan had worked. On my 20th birthday, I wrote my second five-year plan. Having seen results the first time, I was more motivated this time and better at setting goals (all that about language and achievability...the whole shebang). Tomorrow is my twenty-fourth birthday. And I am nowhere close achieving anything I had planned to. Basically I have nothing to how for all the investment (of time, effort and money) made fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mouse King

 I miss Busboys and poets. I miss Community forklift. I miss watching local theater plays at the Silver Spring theater. Except I was no more lost now than I was then. That sentence sounds ominous. I am almost 31 weeks pregnant. Or perhaps 32 based on what the measurements were at my last exam. I finally had an exam after months. Yesterday was the glucose test. Weeks after it was supposed to be. Supposed to be's, should be's, could've been...yada yada yada. I miss DC. Home of my heart. I even miss Maryland. I miss me. The carefree me. I mean, I wouldn't describe life before marriage to be that, but there was a glow in the days before I tethered myself to a man, supposedly for life. Life. Married for life. That's what I thought I was. Guess I thought wrong.  I don't miss it. Or him. Alhumdulillah that's a blessing. I don't think I never will. I am afraid it'll hit me in one large wave once the nastiness of this divorce is over. Like a complete washout....
Post a Comment
Read more

Anas

  I run outside my breath, a gasp. My feet stop, in shock. The moon is full tonight. A breeze slides over my skin. The tide… still crashes on the shore. I try to breathe. I can’t. How has the time not stopped… tonight? I go to the sea. We sit. We wonder. We reminisce. We wonder how many school lunches they spent to fell… a man of his might. The sea takes me in her arms, whispers words of comfort just as meaningless tonight as they have been, for years. He was a man I never met, but with all the pride, and ferocity, of a sister I call him my brother. He was a man I mourn tonight, as the sea’s waves lap at my feet. Blanketed by the dark, there is no one around. I wish I could drown, that the sea will swallow me whole. I feel helpless. The weight of the world… is heavy tonight. I give charity in his name. I pray for him. I hold him in my heart. Every tear that falls from my eyes carries his name, like a cherished pearl. Morning takes me by surprise. ...
Post a Comment
Read more