POSSIBLY LOUD INTROVERT

I had a dream that I ran into my least significant ex and it felt like an exciting moment meeting an old friend who knows exactly where you’re at right now and what you need. The feeling was mutual. We hugged so tight we cried.

I don’t think you get that I already know everything that you’re telling me. I read the research papers and watched multiple documentaries of scientists and dermatologists telling me all what I need to know about skin. And I even executed a personal investigation into south Asian communities and forums to know how to be the best Woman I could be. I was a consultant to the other desperate girls (my unpaying customers) in the IB program. I know this all already. You’re rapping it off back to me because you weren’t here 4-10 years ago. I’m bored and insulted. I’ve already told you and I’m going to tell you again. I promise you my largest organ used to glow like glass. But really what you want to tell me is that right now I’m looking and acting an awful lot like a man, so I have to get my shit together quick if I ever want to seduce you. You can’t seem to gather that I just don’t give a fuck anymore. I want to tell you “by the way your poetry from 2016 is far better than your stupid low effort trash love poems.” But I had gathered you didn’t give a fuck about poetry anymore.

Mama picked up the object, pinching it from the edge with the tips of her fingers, holding it an arms length away. Scrunching her nose with eyebrows tight, and squeezing her bottom lids up, she’d ask “and what’s. This?” Sounding stupid and confused. I fucking hated it every time. At least don’t act stupid and confused. You look stupid and confused. Each time it was something like a Gillette, a tampon, a lipstick that was too pink for her liking, waxing strips, a bra she didn’t remember buying, patterned underwear that wasn’t a high brief Hanes. Each symbol of proud femininity and growing sexuality was painted and drooled over by the bleeding stupidity, confusion, disgust, and unresolved shame that dripped from her fingertips. This is why I can’t have money.

When I was about 10 in Dubai mama caught me playing tag with the kids in the neighborhood. One of these kids was an Abdul. He was like 8. She apparated at the entrance of the pagoda. To her horror finding me being chased by this little boy, I was silently herded into the family’s pride and joy Prado, where she screamed my ear off, pulling her hair and mine. Ghadi! What a slut i was, what a whore I was becoming. He’s 8, I’d murmur. He has ugly teeth anyways, I’d try - failing. My sister who would usually rescue me from situations like this was at the mall watching the latest twilight movie with some of her many friends. I hate Stephenie Meyer, the Harry Potter books are better anyways. My favorite book at this time was “A Child Called “It”.” When I told mama why I liked the book she’d look at me stupid and confused. I was locked in that car until the movie was over and Maria’s friends had dropped her back off after their dinner.

I pictured myself as the boy locked in the cupboard under the stairs with the scarred forehead. I pictured myself as the boy locked in the airtight bathroom with mustard gas. Then I pictured myself somewhere far away and dead. My body is in the sandy dunes I’ve never seen before. My body is dropped from the building the 3 year old girl fell and went “splat” from. My body is done away with quickly to the large whirring gears in the giant engine of the end-of-the-world-escape-ship. My body is split into undone mosaic by accelerating fishing wire. “Ya Allah take me. Death. Death.” My peaceful mantra. Years pass. My hair is gray in that car. My mother is as young as ever and she won’t stop boasting about the compliments she receives over her Nivea and sunscreen only routine. My hair coils as white as the detailing on the Toyota and she is bursting with energy and passion. A line presses permanently into my forehead and my mother’s skin is smooth.

I was to never play with the children again. “You should be grateful your father didn’t see. He’d be a lot angrier. He would’ve even hit you (finally).” To her dismay, he never did and he would come to never near close. I began to believe I was madly in love with Abdul, actually.

I’m tired of rebelling now. I don’t care to disappoint my mother anymore. So I don’t know how to chase men anymore. I only care and know how to feel alone just how she likes it. And our relationship has never been better.

“You know getting married is to fulfill half of your deen.” She tells me now. “We’re leaving it up to you since you want it that way. But it’s a sin for us to reject these rishtas without you even meeting them.” “Right. I know.” “So there’s no one you’re interested in?” She’d ask sounding stupid and confused.

Intensely moving scenes on the streets of Ramallah tonight as long-awaited loved ones return home

Footage emerged from Gazan journalist Nooh Al-Shagboni of the heroes of the Civil Defense rescuing a number of children, women, and youth from under the rubble of a home bombed by the IOF in Gaza.

A 37-day-old baby named Salam (peace), born during the first days of the war amidst the bombing, was rescued after a four-hour-long operation, reborn from under the rubble after all thought she had been martyred.

2/16/23 I shut the door to my apartment in attempts to keep the sticky Texas heat out. Summer had come early. Again. How many times were we going to pretend that summer had come early, before we accepted it as a new normal? That we needed to start teaching kindergarteners that summer begins in April, and ends in, well, November? But to also tell them: really that doesn’t mean the heat is gone in the latter months, it lingers around making sudden appearances every few weeks. “Did you miss me?” The heat will cry. “Did you forget about me?” God the sun is standing uncomfortably close.  The stuffy heat reminds me of strange men’s breath on the back of my neck. Some of them loitered at my work. They’ll forget I’m just another working employee behind the bar. They’ll see right through me as if confronting me for who I really am. Until I am painfully aware of whatever femininity I ultimately blame myself for showing off. I make a mental note to dress duller next time. The men are generally harmless, I know, but when they come close it is suffocating. “Did you miss me?” “Did you forget about me?” 

I’m roused from my thoughts as I’m met with a cool burst of air. Peeling off the damp smells of the city from my body, I collapse onto the depressed dent in my couch. Now that I’m indoors and separate from the surrounding world, I can tell how much I reeked of gasoline. Walking through the city does that to you, I guess. 

A gentle buzz from my phone reminds me of you. Instead it’s another automated text message reminding me of my last chance at some sort of sale. I punch in the letters “STOP,” and lean back to remember you. I do this a lot.  There was a time where we were very close. In all ways except distance. This virtual arrangement was no issue to me. I could sporadically update you about the littlest events throughout my day. And we would spend the hours before sleep recounting our different complaints and celebrations. I’d like to say we avidly agreed on most things. But really what kept things so interesting were our arguments. You were always wrong, and so was I. And somehow both of us being wrong was the strongest trait we had in common. Our lostness tied us together as we felt we were the only two truly questioning and navigating the world around us.

Or so I thought. A little over a year passed by, and you escaped our depressive interpretation of the world and into the physical arms of someone else’s embrace. To picture you leaving your cynical world and feeling love, connectedness and comfort is disturbingly beautiful. It gives me hope, but more so it makes my stomach sink to depths I want to forget. I was right here. But I wasn’t. I was a couple thousand miles away and we both knew that. And that one time I did visit you - I didn’t feel present. And because of that things had changed. I didn’t perform well. I didn’t meet the expectations set on me. I didn’t finish. I couldn’t finish. You touched me and I had to teach my body to feel good. I had to train my brain to release dopamine in response. But with the way I pushed myself to concentrate, while you were trying to make me feel good, I was probably releasing cortisol instead.  I’m at a constant war with these slimy chemicals. The fluids that my hypothalamus decides which out of them my pituitary gland should excrete. Are any of those words even real? Biology has opened a new and daunting door of self-awareness.  I trick my body by taking a combination of estrogen and progesterone. They stabilize my dramatic mood swings, prevent painful cramps, and make sex “safe.” You know, to stop me from shooting out a child for any moment you touch me. I imagine the two hormones to be sisters. They probably dress in pinks and lavenders and skip down my glands while holding hands. They take turns braiding each others hair. They hold each other while watching scary movies. And wipe away each others tears as they share their pain. I feel their sisterhood mocking me. 

I open a private browser and damn myself to the pits of Reddit. For the same reasons every other person privately browsing Reddit is: to ask any variation of the age old question “WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???” Why don’t I desire you the way I should. Why can’t I find myself to desire anyone else. Even at work the other bartenders enjoy the witty flirting back and forth. But I can’t help but feel it all to be pointless and draining. I guess I don’t have to be sexy in order to survive or anything. I don’t have to engage in sex if I don’t want to. No one is making me do or be anything really. But there’s a part of me that yearns to exercise my sex. I want to want to enjoy these feelings, I confirm to myself. And I want to to be fun, a smaller voice whispered to myself. So I swindle down the rabbit hole of different forum links and come to the self evaluated conclusion that, get this, I lack testosterone. 

Somehow those two little girls were working so hard with their fancy female hormones that I ended up feeling less of a woman than I ever have before. Like literally. All the estrogen and progesterone has shrunken my clit. Like a victim to phantom limb syndrome, it feels cold and absent where my clitoris is supposed to be, Doctor. The cure is to man up and grow some balls, he tells me.  How has my body reached this stage? Why are my hormones all wrong? How do I train my endocrine system to do things right for once? I imagine my little pituitary gland fumbling different bottles and bitters into a cocktail shaker that he stupidly lets spill everywhere. Who let this guy in charge? I grit my teeth and once again let the heat take over my mind and the cortisol wave over my body.

3/16/22

Like you loved me. 

“I’m pretty good at fixing spines, cracking backs, chiropractin, whatever you wanna call it. My mother would even say I’m a bit of a natural. As the youngest I kinda got forced into getting into the knack of these sorts of things.”

“Really,” X focused her gaze onto his “Well I’ve always wanted to get my back all fixed up. I swear it’s been aching since the first time I even became aware of my body. I think it would feel quite nice…” To be released. X pauses on this thought. The idea of her muscles loosening up the hold they have on each other, the dull soreness that has been consistently beating in the background for the last decade of her life could finally be resolved. If only she just let -

“You’re pretty tense.”

“I know.”

“You’d need to lay down. On a hard surface probably. This bed won’t do, it’s not really the softest either though - oh, no offense,” Y glances over to her face, she doesn’t seem to take offense, let alone hear him. He continues “I could even get the job done if you stand up, or the floor would be best, but uh…”

He trails off as they both stare at the crumbs of cat litter and loose hairs scattered across the floor of the shoebox room. She blushes in embarrassment, except Y can’t really tell all that from underneath X’s complexion, so it just looks like she purses her lips tightly together into an awkward smile. 

“It’s alright.” She says firmly. Maybe some other time, she thinks to herself. Ignoring the obvious thought that she simply wasn’t sure, or ready. How to live on without the comfort of the dull hum that lived within the depths of her spine? 

He stays for a bit. Then leaves. 

He visits again. In a hazy dream. Except this time I’m on the floor. Ankles, knees, stomach, wrists, breasts, chin pressed to the floor. The crumbs of cat litter pinch my skin. I swear this isn’t a dream and I feel myself confirming this by reciting to myself whatever information I can collect from my senses. I smell dust prickling my nose and taste the staleness of my mouth. I’m surely awake. 

“You’re pretty tense.”

I try to respond, but my tongue is locked underneath a heavy spell. I try to scream, not because I am frightened, but to test if I can at all.

He prepares to align me. To fix me up. To alleviate my pain. I tell myself. I have no choice but to accept it. I had to be ready for this day after all, I couldn’t go on like this forever. Y’s palms spread flat on my shoulder blades. I hold my breath, eyes shut tense, bracing for what’s next. My heart is beating so fast, yet I can’t feel the blood pounding inside me. Only the cold prickly floor. 

Y pauses. Hesitates? He traces his fingers down each vertebra of my spine. My skin feels thin, like a flimsy sheet of dough. If he pressed any further I’m sure that I would tear. He probably just scans his hands over me to decide where to press into my back first. But I let my mind wander. To a time where I didn’t think all that much, though I believed I did. I pretend you trace my vulnerability as if… Well, I pretend it’s as if you loved me. Like you loved me. 

The feeling is so strong I’m pulled away from the floor. As if I’m falling in reverse. The scenery around molds into something else. I’m no longer in that closeted room. 

Instead I am in the center of a circle with many centers. A circle with no circumference. 

X had read about this before but it never quite made sense to her up until, maybe, now. 

Like you loved me.