By Tarfia Faizullah
I had been sad again but that wasn’t the point.
It was sadness’s underside—the reassuring panic
of sadness. The undersad, haha. But happiness
can’t be a goal, no, no matter what lies they sell:
plastic-wrapped, party-ready, ready-to-be-heated.
I.e., do pass go. Do feed the animals, among which
ignobly noble beings I count myself, creature as I
am, creature that shits & shimmies & shoulders
& shatters. But the point
I must make about sadness is this: it settles
in the cracks, especially of empire, i.e., what is
my worth without my suffering? Because wasn’t
the first wound... birth? Wasn’t the wound
that happened to her (mother, obviously)
also the wind that woke the winding wild
to make sense of the clouded centuries?
So maybe I did have a choice in my birth.
Maybe I chose it; yes, it was my fault—
then the routine of it (being alive), then
the years of thwarting discipline only to
deserve it, at last. Then the years I chose
the pretense of ignorance so as to collapse
inside many a coddling and cruel companionship.
So I did choose it, it is my fault: the sadness.
Mine—! Perhaps you’re wondering
what this has to do with sadness. You’re saying,
when will she say what I need to hear, i.e., this
love will still be here, or, the water is real water,
not that fake movie water, but the good stuff,
from creeks glowing with a lack of human touch.
A friend asked about wetlands today.
What was there to say? Except, oh, I keep
forgetting about the land, or, I forget to lift
my head from the clutter this life makes of life
to look at what the world has made of itself,
finally.
*
There is a finale I don’t know how to write,
don’t know how to bargain with, do not know
when to cajole out of its crabby little red cave.
There is a fish who is also a man who is also a star,
or so I just wrote now, surprising myself, but who
knows the difference between revelation
on mornings I wake to my own alien
face, only to encounter another’s,
and that was the trick of it, to stand
bedside and hold the hand of, to bend
the knee despite the odds of, despite
the resistance to, i.e., we hear the call,
so let’s go then, let’s get on with it—!
Which is to say the sadness wasn’t about
the passage of time, per se, and yet
how long can we last may be the main
question, yes, duration and speed, and
depth, I suppose, if I’m being honest,
which I am approximately half the time,
depending. Again, the unexpected
but regular occurrence of, despite.
Despite? Despite achievement,
attention, affection. Despite beauty,
which we were not, yet, in their eyes,
the world had not yet caught up to this
luster & intensity. Meaning, sadness
happened regardless, and again.
*
Isn’t this what I always said I wanted—
a line a younger version wrote to a sister
dead enough to devote to, for an undead,
at least. Even then I knew ghosts
I wasn’t sure I believed in could hear
the hedonism I struggle still to hide,
i.e., the dark wish, the immersion in, then
of—the black eyeliner denser and darker,
more exact, swifter now in its exquisite
execution, the gazes more practiced,
but also, more glancing. Even now
I am speaking as though I can hear me.
*
But let’s keep going, shall we, though
wasn’t that a convincing finale? In a way,
the gratitude is the upheaval: a text
I send now to a friend. For there were
the years a mind that was mine was
clenched in a fist in a fist I myself
unfurled one breathless finger at a time
only to press, moaning, around my own
throat. Neck? Throat? Neck: little
snappable. Little soft gasp for dessert. I
want it, is what I’m saying: the plunder,
the peacocking, to play praying
mantis, to grow up, finally, to plead
my case and be punished mercifully
for all I consume I have yet to deserve.
I.e., I’ve never forgotten the fact
the praying mantis eats her mate,
and what is my fate if not to be an insect?
*
The point is, I rose just now from bed
where I was reading fully clothed, having
given up on the point, until I remembered:
since last week I have been meaning to write
about a child I saw at the mosque, wearing
a fuzzy cat-ears headband and a dinosaur
t-shirt...a brontosaurus, methinks, i.e., sauropod,
and if there is nothing else to this life, I have
at least carried her here, thus, far,
and while the same problems are t/here
as before: the sadness of separation
from God, the sadness of separation
by gender, the sadness of separation
from, and by, land, the sadness
of separation of me from you, you
from you, me from me, the sadness
of it all, but
the softness
the softness
the softness
the softness
the softness
of the ears of that little person’s headband,
of the light falling through the dome,
of the carpet beneath my feet as we bend,
as we rise, as we bow, yes, the sadness was
t/here, but so were we, so too are we, far
as far as we are, and so, then, the old lines
of music are too,
and to us, and in us,
must still return.
Like the Ring-Necked Snake
I am sometimes collared. Like the ring-
necked snake I make my way wild
through the night. I too sun myself to make
my own heat on days cloudy as a heart.
My venom is weak, but stings like a secret.
Ongoing Time Stabbed by a Dagger
In Magritte’s Time Transfixed,
the train emerges from a
hearthless fireplace in a room
without shadows. You
will say this image
is impossible—but I would
argue so too are all images,
like the one of a dictator smiling,
or of the little girl whose fear
of bombs has caused a loss of all
her hair, thin wisps of which I can’t shake
so easily from what is still my mind.
