On Losing Meaning

A pen is a pen when it needs to permeate the possibilities of pinning down a clock’s pendulum at the exact hour of the precise moment the pen decided to muster a few strokes and blows to the memory of the pencil it once was or never could have been,*

*The pendulum stops exactly where the mosaic was forced again into its original pattern. While the flowers were waiting to be watered and the light from the window was craving a silhouette and the tea was ice and the home had become a cave and the numbers on the walls were cyanotypes and empty plates were all that were left, the subject is still – waiting. The urgency was dwindling and the machine was rusting and it was raised on a smile so this is how it subtly refuses to greet the hands of liability. When the only way it knows how to give is to borrow: leave, because they never gave it what it needed and what it needed became tyranny over desire.

A sheet is a sheet Until it sheds an inkfull tear to bear the pain of a pen perishing its innocence Reminded of the fact that sheets were meant to be slashed and thrashed and ripped apart over and over and drowned over and over and again again again until A river A memorylane A life,

A hand is a hand Until the subject becomes emotionally unavailable Becomes a metaphor Becomes the womb Becomes a carrier of a jester’s scepter A knight’s destrier A conductor’s baton A butcher’s knife A maker’s mercy A maker’s mark,

A self** is a savior until you factor in its revolting will to juice its lonely heart out at every given moment Commemorated by three lines on the softest part of the skin Oozing out the ink that makes the hand that holds the pen that destroys the sheet that papier-mâché’s everything back together again until the scarlet letters align,

**Two souls in a casket, praying to be heard. By each other or another? They only meet at night, fearless into a new word, whether it’s whispered or wuthered. Sometimes one says things like ‘While demure is having its 15 seconds of fame, I was having a breakdown’, as it orders a hazelnut latte in line at the coffee kiosk. As Taylor sings You know time can heal almost anything, the other still carries shaken bones from panic attacks under running water. And sometimes the other cries about a fish on a hook and the reality of cuckoo birds pushing infants out of their nests. Falling. In the shower. Falling. Bruises. Falling. The first puts herself on a shelf, with her books and vinyls and the other puts herself on a pedestal. At night, they pray, Maybe one day, they’ll find who they’re supposed to be – the Duality of fifteen going on thirty-five – as one, reincarnated after dawn.

A mother is a mother just before she becomes a bearer of screams and jabs to the heart as her kin face an unkind world A mankind type of world Or Worse Create their own kind of world from scratch From lessons she burned her skin to brand on theirs just to have them cover it up in shame and ink and blank sheets and ablaze and forbidden fruits and,

A grandfather is a father who showed up and In his unforgiving departure Left behind cracks on the white walls and fissures on marble I swore were the house’s tears missing the warmth of his footsteps The very feet that excavated the world’s past There were so many questions never asked Did you leave me a map in the cracks Did you hope I’d find my own path Did you love me the most Did you see the fire in me It burnt down the road And the funeral lasted three days And not enough And I miss you And your tea is cold And still And,

A black hole*** is just another party drug until you become the blind spot Entrapped in the blazing billowing screeches of your own mind When the sound becomes the only thing you hold onto When the sound of the wind intrudes like a whisper in the dark When the fear of never hearing your mother’s reproach again wakes you up,

***Somewhere across oceans, Areej told me she was ‘a black hole these days’. We had met when we were children, when the tea was still steaming and the floors were carpeted – a fact we had both forgotten, only for the world to bring us back together again twenty years later in the age of strobing lights and cold and chaos and rage and falling bombs and smoking guns and starving children and childish leaders and clickbait and clicking knees and blistering feet and broken hearts and… and… Maybe succumbing to the black hole inside you is the easiest way out. It has collected bridges and promises and funerals and light and the throne I used to own in my mother’s eyes and… and… I’m brought back to her questioning why I’d rather flock to the sky than pick up The Book, and my answer was always What could be more religious than experiencing the very world that God created. I walked it to no end and swam in sun glitter and glided through shades of green and picked the sweetest fruits, only to be brought back to the black hole at the end of the tunnel. When darkness becomes the world, you look for the only haven left: The finger landed on the words After the coldest winter, they were met with a feast, and maybe that was the nod from God I was looking for all along. Waiting for me, on a dusty page.

Feet are just feet Until you realize they’ve become vehicles for evacuating youth Until the pavement bends and breaks Until the roads twist to the exact moment in the exact place you’ve stood to watch the pendulum oscillate Until the ground becomes a battlefield of dead succulents and escapisms and metaphors and unrealized resolutions Until you’ve realized a whole generation has replaced carpets for hardwood floors Until you’ve realized that all these roads lead to God Until you’ve realized a prayer is a clink at the bottom of the barrel Until the softest skin blisters But not until the carpet has first burned the feet**** that carried you to the end of your youth,

****I am your power
because I follow
In the wounds of
unanswered questions
I forgot
to stand still

The stars***** are just little flames Waving Flags Praised on a pillar for their lustre and consistency Never knowing From the ground we invaded for greed That they had burnt out long ago They were meant to anchor the sky you reached for Prompt the peace you manifested Turn the page Lead you home,

*****I blew out the candle on my bedside
as a prayer

If you and I were two stars in the sky
would we have questioned the pain?
would we have wedged this galaxy between us?
were we just a litany of lies?

Even in a world of scars and blood and salt,
I still believe that the light
at the end of the tunnel
is not death but the whole universe
waiting for you to arrive

All I ask is that you wait on me
with the patience of a whole world,
the sureness of a fist in the air,
the soul of a choir,

If the stars were candles, I would’ve blown them out.
If the stars were our candles, they would’ve never blown us out.

And I’ll die screaming,
I’ll break my back carrying the horse,
I’ll fight the ecstasy of illusion
and I’ll forever wonder if they took you
where you needed to go

It’s a strange world out there –
one that sticks you up, peels you back off again –
one that kills you just to Heimlich the air into your lungs –
one that wakes you up in the middle of the night
to tell you it loves you.

A prayer is just a prayer until it becomes a penny in a jar****** and You’d seen exactly how this prayer was written No head over water The bridge of my nose somewhere over The surface Seeing without breathing Blinking twice before receiving Discouraging any teething Oh how we love how something is done what it’s told,

******A compass breaks
in a barren, solemn desert
Reaching for clear signs, under clear skies
Wishing there were none

A whisper turned cough

A wave crashing the shore, no more; never

I swear the tree fell,
I caught a glimpse of the cactus’ corpse,
I promise the forget-me-not was the last petal

As I walk through your valleys, granite and sandstone
there were no obstructions at all
no mirage to break the fall

Your face a penny jar, filled to the brim
for all the wishes I made before

+clink+ on the surface

A compass breaks
In a barren, solemn desert
The ripples,
my veil

A word is a whole world until it becomes insufficient to portray the means in which you have drained me from all forms of happiness as I postpartum a lifetime of denying the fact that life is a hierarchy of needs and I know I must seem reserved over static but I promise I’m only making sense of the preposterous situation in which I can’t get what I want and I promise I’ll write you a love letter soon and I promise I like pretty words just as much as the next kid and they’ve been home since I was nine but when I think of home the pen runs dry until I think of the way the sheers become pregnant with wind at dusk at my grandparents’ house just begging to whisk something away but never fully crossing the threshold and I’m still waiting to break my patterns and the dust is still on the page and the home is yet to be excavated and when I think of my father I only think of two words and when I think of you I think of three and when I think of myself,

Time is just time until the pendulum stops to ask Am I really all you think about Suppose I were to begin this piece with an intercession: Your brilliance was muddled with your own cleverness Suppose that the compass never broke: Would the desert have been solemn or savior Suppose you chose the stars instead of the black hole: Would you still die screaming to find the light Suppose you chose to walk through your own fire: Would you break the ego and turn it to gold Suppose the prayer was never answered: Would you still look for God Suppose I were to begin this piece with a blank page: Where would you like to be destined today?

Answer and feast.