I Will Make Up For Lost Time.

Intelligence grand and ever expanding,

his head pounds with new ideas, while the heart in his chest beats slower,

his empathy is sluggish and cold.

The same old cruelty that ran in the veins of the cavemen is steady in him, his wisdom in vain. He has become acutely worse, torturing with metal tools instead of wooden ones, brainwashing with television instead of word of mouth, colonizing with guns instead of swords. What use is knowledge in the hands of a dominator? It becomes just another weapon, words to razors sentences to spears. Do not waste intellect on brutes, they will wound you deeper because they will know where it hurts.

When I was a child I’d only known depression through medicine commercials, where the depressed person was a porcelain wind up doll that had to be wound over and over again to walk. I didn’t really understand it then, tucked away neatly in my television set. Why wouldn’t they want to keep going, always? Why would they need to be wound? And now as I look down at my porcelain foot, I wonder why it isn’t shuffling in front of the other.

Let her die softly, let the seabed take her as if in a dream.

I cling to the anchor because I think the ship will drown me.

I crave the familiarity of the salt water over the cold whipping of the air.

Because I would rather drown than change, I would rather stay stuck in the same place for the rest of my life than breath the air of tomorrow.

She caressed her lover’s hair like a bird tending her nest; she saw only futures in the black tangles clinging to her fingers.

Oh, I feel warm. I feel warm like the sun even in the darkest of rooms. I am me again.

The philosopher in my life, who speaks in thoughts and sits in inaction which he poses as an intellectual buffer. It is far easier to sit in living rooms and bore holes in the minds of grandparents with perpetual conversations than enact a plan. Set the bird free from the cage, and see if it flies, I say. But no, he sits and prunes the feathers of his ideas, endlessly and all the days on. For if he never sets his pondering in motion, he will never have to face that his bird is not living, and that which never lives never flies.

I never knew nothing could be so heavy as it is now. Air rests in my hands like handlebars on a bike to nowhere. Chain links of silence drill their fingers into my ears, it is all I can hear now. My muscles weary from carrying do not rest now that he is gone. They anticipate the next departure. They cling to routine, clutching, clutching, unable to let go. All they’ve ever known is hanging on, just another day. What is there left for them now but emptiness, slopping down like wet concrete. Frozen in time.

16 years old, five people around my table, two legs, and no bombs. I eat dinner with my family and we laugh at my dad dropping Qidreh on his chest. He looks at me with an embarrassed smile and I hand him a cloth to wipe himself with. 16 years old, one person around my table, one and a half legs, one bomb. My dad amputates my leg as I lay on the dinner table. He looks at me with anguish and I cry out to him as I feel every cut he makes. There is no anesthesia, there is no hospital for me to go to, my father the surgeon looks out of place operating in our family home. But my leg must come off, and the laughter of past dinners must quiet to allow for my screams. 16 years old, one leg, too many bombs to count. I clench my jaw to keep quiet as my father changes my leg’s dressing. He looks at me with apologetic eyes and I hand him a cloth to wipe my wound with. 16 years old, one leg, and one hope left: to make it to 17.

The Girl who Cried Wolf

Was never met with hurried steps coming to her aid in the dead of night. The first night she watched for the beast, his golden eyes burned from a breath beyond the treeline. She shouted out for pitchforks, torches, and only felt wind and moonlight rushing to her side. Nobody believed her the first time.