A place to put it all down

I meant to breathe but I forgot

I am coming undone

Softly

Or collapsing inward 

Slowly

Heart coated in lead

Heavy 

I try to remember to breathe but

My lungs are coated too

This is the decay 

 is that it doesn’t happen all at once. 

It happens slowly with:

careless moments where they

 didn’t even think of you

and

selfish moments where they thought of you 

and 

1. We remember negative events more vividly then positive ones because there is an evolutionary advantage to remembering painful things.

2. Our sense of smell is said to trigger the most vivid memories.

3. The average adult breathes 12-20 times a minute.

4. A heart usually weighs 8-10 ounces and beats 100 000 times a day.

Not-so-fun Facts:

1. All the moments I think of with you are good memories. They seem to replay in technicolor as if I’m watching a home movies. Again and again. I  spend more time remembering then I do living. The painful thing is that you’re gone. But sometimes I’ll forget that.

2. Everything reminds me of you. Smells, sounds, sights.

3. I’ve forgotten how to breathe without you. Sometimes I’ll get dizzy holding my breath as if I’m waiting for you to come back.

her big forehead,

her drooping shoulders,

her hands,

her feet. 

Her stubbornness,

her absentmindedness, 

her selflessness

But God, give me her strength 

Give me the ability to endure. 

Mama how are you able to take batterings of life

Without daily breakdowns

How are you able to accept, 

without waves of sadness drowning you. 

I’ve taken a fraction of what you have

and I’m on my knees, bent over 

 and I am breathless. 

My wish is to be like you. 

Tough. Composed. Resilient

And my biggest fear is 

that I will become used to the pain

Life will harden me

“Never forget.”

We won’t

“Always remember.”

I do. I have a soft heart. Pain begets pain.

I just wonder why some tragedies are given weight in this world

And others are not.

 I remember a boy named Christopher (a Christian from South India)

Was called a terrorist

He was a year (or two?) older

I was going to jump in and take a stand

But before I could

He turned to me and said

“I’m not the terrorist.

She is.”

What a strange thing for someone to say to a grade three girl.

 Oh Christopher. You’ll never be one of them

So long as you have melanin in your skin

Or something vaguely foreign

You’ll never be one of them

Trust me, I know.

 “Hey! Do you know Osama Bin Laden?”

I was in grade 5 and walking home

Not really sure of what to say except

“No I don’t!”

That didn’t matter to them. They persisted.

I went home and told my dad

He told me. “Don’t worry about them. Tell them he’s your uncle”

So I did. Dripping with sarcasm, I told them. And they left me alone.

Sometimes ignorance must be met with humour.

This is the lesson my dad had learned as he was called Paki

This is the lesson he passed down to me.

 In grade 12, a friend of a friend said

“Yeah I mean it’s fine to have a religion

But you shouldn’t be an extremist.

Like Fatima.”

I always thought that as a Muslim

I was failing. I was flawed. Let me be better.

So someone calling me an extremist was kind of funny

I find it less funny as time goes on.

I don’t know what to say

When my existence in this world is an extremist action.

 In grade four:

Half for religiosity. And half as an act of defiance.

I started wearing the hijab. A two-piece.

In the hustle and bustle of after recess activity,

Half of it was taken, right off my head

Snuck into some other students backpack

Returned the next day with bewilderment

Done by a friend. As a joke.

I wasn’t laughing. I’m still not laughing.

It’s hard to find humour in ignorance.

 I hear news stories.

Even now

“Hundreds Gather in Arizona for Armed anti-Muslim Protest”

1.6 billion people walk this earth as Muslims

In Quebec they’ve created a values charter

That bans the hijab and other religious symbols

Ordinary Muslims have been attacked and beaten and killed

And so have Sikh men, because they look vaguely Muslim enough.

 Since that horrific day in September

When I was 8 years old

and the world was brought to its knees

I’ve been on the defensive, trying to clear my name and prove my innocence

On that day, and since then, an enemy has been identified.

 silent screams

scorch my throat.

.

I would much rather have the satisfaction

of honesty and a raw larynx

Than the shame and lump

of repression and silence.

.

But what I would rather have

Doesn’t often come into play. 

What I end up with is a mute mouth

or else a half hysterical babbling

That has none of the clarity or insistence 

of what is pounding my mind. 

Like a soldier cuts off a gangrened limb

in the middle of a battlefield

We were in our own.

I cut you off. 

Ruthlessly and with great certainty 

knowing it was necessary

To save my own life. 

I cut you off. 

But you’re not like an arm or leg,

there’s no phantom limb

that gives location to the pain 

I cut you off. 

And where I've put you since is imperceptible 

I can’t point to which part of me is missing

i .

Did you know

That before a caterpillar turns into a butterfly

Enzymes dissolve it

With a tough outer shell

Inside it is almost completely broken down

It is liquefied.

I don’t know

If I am going to metamorphasize

But I am completely broken,

There is nothing solid left to me.

 ii.

Scientists have recently discovered

That butterflies retain memories of when they were caterpillars

So something must have remained.

Reintegration for a caterpillar is natural,

I am still searching.

 iii.

Caterpillars crawl towards deterioration  

It is their instinct.

They must know it is not their end

I marched towards annihilation,

I did not know what would become of me.

iv.

The caterpillar became a butterfly

And in the process of destruction

I became.  

I guess for now,

and I tell them:

Start with a capital

make     sure     you     have    finger     spaces

finish with a period.

but I don’t practice what I preach 

i don’t start with capitals

starting is always the hardest part

and I have to ease my way in 

with unassuming lowercases

 often I leave my sentences hanging

because there is a finality

and I know a period is a pause 

but to me it’s an end

and I have a hard time letting things go 

sometimes I don’t leave enough space

Ipusheverythingtogether

because I know if I don’t

it might fall apart

so maybe I shouldn’t teach kids how to write sentences

when I can’t even write my own

about his experience with the whale

Because lately I’ve been feeling that 

I’ve been devoured by something much bigger than myself

I’ve been swallowed whole

Plunged into darkness. And turned all around

And my only hope  lies in beseeching God

For  guidance and redemption

Because man was not made

To live within such circumstances