God

Not the gluttonous delight,
nor the pleasure of orgasm.
Not the way salt sticks to a hard-boiled egg,
nor the tornado,
but the one quick sunset thereafter,
the musky pink sky darkening
and now your hair tangled and dry like weeds.
The sadness of overhearing a song through thick walls,
and singing it achingly slow while the real words have passed,
a new song is on. You have an epiphany.
The ripple of water after turning off the stove,
and the miraculous inflation of your bellies,
breathing healthily now.
This day only happens once in your life,
or thrice,
or never.

The End of the World Through a Child's Eyes

When God would join us, too,
and kneel down on the floor with the rest of us,
snap his fingers or flick the light switch,
and we'd all go to sleep.

Duplicate #32527962745813041724

And what different am I from the others who have written about the leaves jingling like bells? And why is that so wrong? because of this force pushing us into what we ought to be? a damned species made to die, and to fear it throughout our lives, of listening to the leaves and sight-seeing in Nashville, and then passing on that dying life to other little humans?

Then what makes a species, Eve? And what is so wrong about being the same when you have the ability- and choice- to  be happy, though it feels as if you don't? Then you searched and searched at the different, yet similar faces, and looked hopelessly into your hands, and then you saw it- your fingerprint- different from them all, unique and authentic. Then Kitty read your palm, her breath smelling like sour cinnamon. And you looked at the sunset, dark blue and orange, and you said to the sky, "For me?"

Rest

My roommate heads to the bathroom and the bright, setting sun beams on the bundle of clothes she's about to pack. A Chinese translation of Sophie's World is on her desk, an English translation on mine. Coincidence. The threads of her black wool sweater flicker under the air condition.

Everything is still, as if every job in the world is done. The world claps its hands, says "okay", and puts its hands on its waists, looking around at its completion. Nana Sinam's curtain is pulled over the edge of my bed and the sun shines through as if it is her soul. I can hear Jesus saying, "It is finished."

I could see flecks of dust conjoining and I remember hoping to have a part of me linger after death. And maybe bits of my skin and nails will flicker in the air, and the sunlight will expose the dust like a ghost at night. It will be like cutting up pieces of paper and calling it confetti, cutting our long hair and calling it donation. But it feels more like burning a rose and calling it ashes.

We will put one foot in the water and the other on the pebbles, one in Virginia and the other in Maryland. And we'll be like gods, in multiple places within the same second. And we'll finally be those objects, the ambiguous rock and the lunch box, the pearl, and the crunchy leaf. We'll finally know how it feels to be a carpet. We'll remain like a strand of hair dangling on your shirt, annoying your arm.

I tell him to tell me things, that the snow sleeps calmly up north, that there are miraculous oddities with certain animals. I sleep with the phone in my warm hand and await the feeling of Christmas morning in September.

September in 2012

I always liked looking at things rather than living them. I remember when I was a child, I thought there was some royalty to stairs, that dresses would dangle and brush against each step, slowly and teasingly. When we finally moved into a two-story home, I went up each stair carefully with my elephant slippers, but I was forcing out a feeling that did not exist, trying to feel what walking-up-and-down-stairs must feel like. I want to take pictures of the homes I see on the brown line and the stairs that lead to the balconies. But I don't want to walk on them. I want to glide past each building and see snippets of lives through windows all in mere seconds. I don't want to be at a party on the roof; I want to see it, to see all the different lives that are in one life, one planet, a person with a million problems handing a bouquet of flowers to another person with a million problems. I want to stand on a ladder and paint my apartment light blue and red and to watch the sunset and the cross out in the distance and hear the "eeeeeeee" in the wheels passing by behind me, blowing my hair. My shirt lifts, too, and they can see my belly button.

Bird outside the kitchen

The birds come to our bird house every day. Specks of seeds bounce against the window and sound like thick hornets crashing into glass. If I could be an animal, I'd be a finch. My mother brings the hot pita bread she has heated over the flame and places it over a paper towel. We dip the pieces into Lebanese yogurt and smile as we eat, watching the birds come and go, some fighting to make room on the bird house.

I tell her how it never gets old to watch them eat, always so frantic, looking up, down, through the window. She smiles silently and then looks down with a bigger smile, dipping her bread.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing," she says. "It's just sometimes I think that my dad sends these birds to check up on me.....and make sure everything is okay. I like to think that he comes in this form to see me."

The Garden

She was quiet and thoughtful. She took out a shovel and uprooted each heavy plant while pushing the shovel down with her flip flops. The sandals bent and dented into the shape of her sole and I told her to wear safer shoes. She was silent and shook her head with a smile.

After scooping and pulling and sometimes being hindered by rocks underground, she managed to uproot the heavy plant. I saw hundreds of roots being revealed in a dirty white and they tore and stretched like an old ship tilting and breaking, sinking slowly and heavily in the water. There are roots to everything even when things become bland and desensitizing, a habit we ritually do. There are roots in me.

She tells me she wants to plant the small bulb I manage to pluck out so that she'll remember me. And I just imagine being dead by next spring, blooming as a reminder to my family.

The bulbs look like onions. Once you slice and kill the fruit, you can throw its remains back into the soil and it'll resurrect. Keep the spark alive. Pass the baton. We are living because of what is now dead.

My body weakens when I encounter cigarettes. When I recover and smell the cigarette smoke of others, my body will know to defend itself; it is now stronger. And when I let someone hurt me, I begin to learn that I deserve better. I am now stronger. My body learns its lesson and so do I.

But life is not metaphor. We will not resurrect. We will merely be compost, a fertilizer. "Hey, it's your turn now," we'll say to the unborn. And we'll pass the baton to them.

It's raining

As I watch the different colors of the sky each day and how the water can be still, but in different ways, I feel God.
It rains in different places, and it rains in my backyard as my grandmother calls from the city and witnesses a dry and cloudy day. But there will be a time for sun and a time for her to hear the rain. God will give without grudge and reveal himself in a parting of a veil, in a bird outside your window, in the rumble of city buses on a fragile concrete ground. And though the good ones don't call out, Jesus, or Babi, he is there. He has always been there.

We will resurrect; I feel it. Like flowers we are, like the raging yet still waters we are, like the flickering leaves that bloom and fall we are. And as I stare into the earth, I see God, so happy, and so lovely, smiling widely like my dad with his eyes squinted shut and teeth glowing in the sun.

Waltz to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

We are all insane, and the only thing keeping us sane is our insanity.

Brother, if I feel these pangs of life so rootedly, so do you. If my mind swerves into madness, so does yours.

It amazes me that out of the same person, the same body, the same mind, I have become different persons. Just like spinning a round fish bowl and witnessing the stability of the water and plants- not moving, though the world, the walls, the glass is spinning. And when the earth spins on axis, when the rock at the park (and the seagull on that rock) remain stagnant when the sun rises, the water trickles and the clouds pull like threads of yarn and the leaves flicker. The world remains the same like stone, noticable like a mother, but changing like the whirlpool in her womb.

Out of my heart comes out an aching rod of panic. And out that same heart, that same planet, that same earth, comes drenching happiness. It stretches like these legs and arms, one half sustained to the gravel, the other suspended in the sky. The muscles stretch like rubber, first a tight ball of dough and then a thinly twirled flat bread, yanked and stretched all over.

When in panic and when my eyes feel tense, unable to stare at people calmly, I go away to myself and take bits of my so-called insanity and talk to myself.

"Tell me what you are excited for in the near future, Steph?"

I then answer without thought, without shame or hesitation or embarrassment, speaking quietly like a vulnerable patient.

"I am excited to feel his warm muscular arm around mine as we walk through the door and to rest my head on the lump under his pillow."

Then I am happy and relieved for a bit, forgetting about my mind. Then, I am in control.

Sometimes I wish that someone can come from beneath the shadows and scream and scare me until I'm screaming, too, both of us screaming, one louder than the other. Then I'll put my hand to my heart, breathe heavily, and then, then we'll both laugh, barely able to speak, pointing a joking finger at our childlike fears.

Sometimes you need the Boogieman to reveal the mystery and pop up and say, "Alright! I really do exist!"

You shake and quiver coldly like a hungry dog, as if you are craving the shadowy monster. Once you see the face of your monster, of the thing in your mind that you call "thought," you will laugh and lay bare your chest and say, "Do your best destroy me" (as Ray Lamontagne sings). It is just a shade of gray, you'll say. A neuron, not even an atom to the eye. And all these years will flash and flicker like a shadow of a dancing tree on the hardwood floor, and you'll realize that the leaves weren't blowing fiercely in the wind and that the darkness of the shadow was a contorted mirror, and the lump beneath your bed was only a bundle of colorful laundry.

Paul told me to embrace everything that comes my way, even these panic attacks. As he was telling me this, I was shaking from fear at hearing the "p" in panic.

How? I thought, could I embrace something that feels so unhealthy and deeply horrific. Though it is a demon and a hard seed, a plant that keeps failing and tilting, it is something I am now trying to embrace and love.

An old lover sees a beauty and a strength in me that I cannot and have never seen. And though I cannot see it, I know it is there. That strength is a shadow, and (oddly) as I wrote "there," the sunlight cleanly flapped through the blinds and onto the word "there."

"Here Comes the Sun" sounded beautiful early today. It's alright. I never knew these words as I've known them today. I felt my bones recovering, and when I went to bed last night, my skull felt like glowing skin and my breathing and my muscles were moist and light.

Right now, I see my strength as a darkness: not sure if I am void of one or if it is shadowed like the monsters inside me.

The sky was changing, from light blue with thin strands of white to pink and purple and blue. But it was so genuine and new. I didn't know if it was the beer or the fact that the sky was unbelievably beautiful now. I looked at the pond and saw a pink reflection sinking into the waters. I ran out of film.

I quickly paced to the swerve of the park, racing with the clouds and the darkness of the end of day. I made it to my neighborhood, walking alongside stray cats and hopping birds with seeds falling out of their mouths. A man with a looped belly stared as he wiped his sweaty forehead and a woman picking up sticks near her mailbox didn't turn to greet me.

The mystery man's lights were beaming through his closed blinds and I felt his eyes. The weeds were plucked and thrown on the sidewalk; my sister was sitting with her muddy feet up against a chair. The sky was gray and mosquitoes blurred my eyes like a camera out of focus, and I hugged the shadows of the black garage.

My mother's image in the car replayed, the way her ears resembled mine, the way my ears resembled hers and how my hair droops down along my head. I fell in love with her and the way the black leaves appeared separate from the sky, unlike an oil painting. The world was all that it is...and I saw it for that moment.

The Sleeptalker

At four in the morning, I thirst. Warm and bubbly my saliva tastes,
a candy-like essence of rum.
Ice knocks in my cup as I drink,
and I sit and talk to my sleeping sister in the shadowed bed across from me. Her eyelashes cascade her purple cheeks,
sweet like the taste of the night's sparkling cups of spirits and talkativeness,
confidence and epiphanies included in the bottle.
And I sit there talking, mouthing and creating a story,
answering questions to an interview.
I forget if I am speaking aloud or whispering, maybe even mouthing voiceless words,
my jaw cracking and my dry tongue clacking against my lips.

I drink my cup, releasing cold and barren breaths. And how sweet,
the taste of nothingness,
turning neon into pastel,
sparkling desert into dew.

I sleep on the thought of recovery but dream of scratching my scabby elbows,
purple blood flooding my broken palms. I dream of a hopeful elder who walks in casts, blood seeping with each step. She cries standing on her bloody feet, being held shoulder to shoulder with a family that is not a family, who can't understand so they tell her to keep walking,
to let the pain hold her captive for just this moment, like letting a dog sniff your crotch so he'll smell the mystery, tilt his head, and walk away.
But she cries and swears to never walk again, to never look into the red eyes of pain, refusing to waltz with the devil.

The voices beneath my window buzz like bees and I count how many car doors slam.
Four slams and it's the Colombian neighbors.
One slam and it's the mystery man across the street.
One slam and a beep-beep, and it's my father.

The morning before this one, a pale doom flickered and chunks of the sky ripped like pages of a thick book.
I hear the sound of metronomes, each tick competing with the previous, saying
now is real, no,
now is real.
The silence after a tick awaits the next, a new reassurance of existence.

I sit alone in the quieting day, asking a bobble head questions,
of fate, fortune,
happiness, surprises.
But the dog nods in a teasing manner, swaying its head on an angle,
giving me opportunity to ask yes or no questions.
We'd choose to have things our way,
the yes to our hopeful question,
the no to our fearful one.
Yet, the sincerity is pounded and worn.

The world needs to explode,
to rumble with storm and to vibrate with sperm,
to erupt, tearing down warm homes with closed doors, ripping trees of their leaves and throwing them into still waters like debris.

There's now a circle of sunlight on the lake, a puddle of ducks drinking on the gold, a delightfully sweet cup of the end of day, shivering and tingling after the boil, alive and renewed as if the first day of creation was having its first sunset, birds applauding with a flapping of wings.
The water moves as if it's gulping itself, so intoxicated and lush, making love unto itself.

The Wild Onion

The Union Station bench smells like vinegar. I sweep the salty seat with my fingers before sitting, and smell my hands.
          Sour.
Ketchup remains after being licked off by Chicago.

Track numbers echo repeatedly. Those who don't keep up with the city, those who sit instead of flee, become consumed with insanity when hearing the repetitive broadcast, seeing the same types of scurrying business people going up and down the escalators with ice cream cones in their hands.

Or maybe to be a Chicagoan is to be crazy, to linger where others scurry,
to sit beside a homeless man as he opens his can of tuna and eats with a plastic fork, some tines broken off like his teeth. He asks people for smiles and not coins to put in his coffee cup.

A man with no legs in a wheelchair tells me to "smile, girl" as I pivot past him across Madison. I shyly smile like a child pleasing a school photographer. He mumbles a "there ya go" as he rolls behind me, the wind laughing through my hair as it shades my face.

Chicago sits in a corner with a homeless man, peering behind an "Unemployed" sign, stealing a coin from the Saxophone Man's hat.

And then you realize, the city is not crazy, just an undulating wave of highs and lows, rich and poor, and loud heels and broken heels [in manholes].

I thought too much and my head was hardening, so I went downstairs and put water in a large pot and started peeling potatoes. Just sitting on the cold kitchen floor and watching the brown skin elegantly slice into the trash felt new. A newness was there; I was just peeling away the old, the grainy cloak filled with dirt. New was there. Old was just being taken away. Well, nothing is ever really new...just a taking away of the old and revealing what was hidden for so long, boiling in the trapped heat, its structure melting and slouching. Peel away the shell and feel the tender, cold touch of new. She's waiting to be opened.

Happiness Hit Her

The speed jolted through her body with a pang, shattering her peeling snake skin. Every sensitive touch tickled her nerves and she laughed with watery eyes.

Haunt

And then there was light. The emptiness in the sky cracked and the sun proved its existence. It was as if it shone for her, gifting her with a speck of color, a warm radiance of life, a hint of nourishment. She squinted into its bold rays, knowing it would speed hastily away and fade like a mist behind the foggy clouds. So she tested her fear and hid herself away, turned the lights on and closed the bathroom door. The light was still shining through the cracks, and the blue of her walls were beaming with a clean white hue, not an artificial paleness. With the doors closed, she could see the clouds opening its jaw for the sun to peak through, curling out its rays like newly bloomed petals. The sun winked through the cracks and pierced through her skin like lasers.

She closed her eyes in the bath, her ears deafening with the sound of water thrusting through the pipes, feeling like little pebbles against her back. The water began to roar through her foamy hair and she opened her eyes with quick gasps, startled with the sudden terror that came from beneath the hidden shadows. A hidden shadow? she laughed in fear, pierced by her own shaky voice. Where could a shadow hide? Behind the deceiving sunlight?

Her chest began to tighten and her short breaths became heavy. She told herself to focus on her routine.

Shampoo is for cleaning the hair and scalp.
This scrub is from Syria and it scrapes away the blemishes.
This soap leaves a sugary scent on my skin.

Blood quivered through her veins with a rhythmic pulse and she glared at the sun's glare with her thighs throbbing with dread. The apparition of faces echoed against her window now, and the sun took back its heat, leaving her with a dry hunger. Defeat socked at her heart and pounded her in the stomach. Her organs tightened up and stung with acid as her body ruthlessly vomited the poison inside. How could such a reeking puree exist in such a being? It forces out the body as one cries out for a settling breath and the vulnerable organs are bitten with sting.

But this feeling of hers was a dry pounding and it bruised more than it stung. She had lost every amount of healthy moisture from her body, and she remained a cracked being. The sun made her sweat like a wet rose until it sucked out the life from her, shriveling her up into a naked widow, wrinkled with death.