میخانه

a dream, a terrible dream. a late-night call from a mother who lost her baby. how can i speak to her. what gives me the right. i ache to tell her that her baby is awaiting her at the threshold, at the gate. i remember the 14wk pprom i saw. that tiny creature, losing its heartbeat. an anger, a terrible anger. five years since that time and still my anger is entire, is unremitting. every year i try to forgive and instead a small ember deepens right beneath my sternum. how many mothers now weep milk. i read an article in the middle of the night about managing breastfeeding after fetal demise. i hear the ache in her voice as she tells me about watching her baby die. a grief, a terrible grief. i have to ask her, "when did you last breastfeed your baby?" and i have to wait to hear the answer. would that the silence between us would expand and encompass and explode, would take up the entire sky. would that my rage would relent. would that i could re-member. would that i--

it was night. the hospital fire alarm had gone off. i went and sat in the hospital hallway because i ached to hear my own language. i saw a mother tap the casket of her good son and i recognized with my own hand the rhythm of it. i wept in the halls after my first two admissions of the night. i saw the graves of the girls of minab. last night as i walked back to my car i took a shallow inhale and maybe a cleaning product, or a soap, or a perfume, or the smell of the cars--some quiet scent took me back to my grandmother's street, and i didn't breathe deeply again until my chest ached a little. the soft sequelae of motherhood, now, in my own body, not fully felt, not fully integrated, not fully mine. it all happened too fast. was it my own womb, really, my own hands? some part of me feels i won't re-member until everyone i love is near. missing pieces of the past, missing my family, missing the land. missing little pieces of my own chest. the little girl who survived the bomb, the beaded plastic bracelet on her left wrist. the bruise harsh sound of english in the hallway. will i ever go back? the question haunts me and haunts me and haunts me.

the shock of it: the search for my friend's cousin's head. his mother, in some awful trance. his two young children. how are my grandmothers doing? will i ever see them again? my own dwindling nerves, the depletion of something very deep in me. i have held iran at a distance in my heart for some time - i felt if i didn't, i could not bear it (the distance, and everything else). now the distance (and with it my heart) has closed, closed. call it depersonalization. call it derealization. call it a war. call it rubble, in which men are searching for another man's head. call it a phone call: khanom, inna lillah. call it a widow. call it a border. call it some kind of rage, some kind of fire. call it grief. call it a falling to my knees. call it a bruise. what of the babies? what of the children? i used to see great pale shining blue angels in my sleep and in my waking. i used to see them with two wings or three wings or four. god, god. please, please.

فَيَكُونُ طَيْرًا بِإِذْنِ اللَّه

so much of the heaviness and fatigue is just the work - and maybe not so much the work itself but the hours, what the hours keep me away from. and then more importantly what it has turned me into even in the hours i do have, this shell of someone who just wants to sleep or scroll

plan b dreams, the horror, cursed full moon ED shift (cancer everywhere), the fatigue that won’t stop deepening, this obsession with that exact shade of yellow green, espy, soundtrack to fevriere, honey eyes, sun on my face, you’re growing up so fast, the fear of war and violence and poverty and abduction, the way the body slowly bends