For Mustafa - Blog Posts
salting wounds with poetry, and counting losses with a pen that’s run dry. tomorrow will be one year since you hurt me for the first time (oh how quickly time flies). and it angers me that everyone can still read your name in between these lines, that your pulse is still the rhythm of my poetry (and my life).
how casually you haunt me, old friend. i am no longer afraid of the memories you left on my skin (though i moved cities to escape them) so perhaps i can call this a year of growth. but is it really, when i spent months trying to fight the urge my bones had to rearrange themselves into a different woman?
the 29th was hot last year, and it is hot today too. but i’m not that girl who was complacent in her own destruction anymore, no. ive left the demolition site for good.
now, i kiss the girl i was and i thank her for staying alive, hold her and say that i’m proud she survived.
My name is I LOVE YOU and all of this is so new and bright. How lovely it is to have you, sunshine, after all this rain! Heaven lies at your feet and the sunrise breaks in your eyes. You are hot flashes and lightning. How the warmth in your palms cuts down my mountain of empty. How I call this love. How I call this wanting.
My name is HOT, my name is SEXY, my name is I-REALLY-WANT-FUCK-YOU and that’s a compliment, right? You wrap your arms around my waist and murmur it under your breath. I let your maggot-filled observations wriggle into the blackening wound in my chest. Call it healing, call it medicine, and call it I’m-going-to-be-okay. My name is GIRLFRIEND now, my name is SWEETNESS, and my name is PERFECT.
My name is BABY and I am lying on the floor. The pain, the bloodstains and the harsh light, your body over mine and my name is NO. My name is STOP. My name is PLEASE SLOW DOWN. My name is I JUST WANTED A HUG. I am a shell of whatever I used to be- nothing more, nothing less. Let this be a funeral for whatever innocence I had left. Let this be my goodbye, my I-swear-I’ll-be-fine.
My name is blood and pain and baby-let’s-never-talk-about-this-again.
My name is N****. My name is BLACK. My name is AFRICAN and I flinch at your awful words. Your father will never know my name, and your mother will never judge me over dinner. I am dirt. I will never be your perfect, goodly, godly girl. I am too brown to really mean anything. There are no riches here. Nothing grows here. The earth is hungry here.
My name is DAMAGED GOODS and I wonder how you could ever love a girl like me. You say it over the phone, your tongue lashing from between your teeth. I listen for the love in your voice like a paramedic listens for breath. I hear nothing. It is dead. My name is UNLOVABLE. My name is WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO DO THIS. All that blood pumping and rushing in my veins are only my own.
My name is I AM SORRY. All those apologies spill over the floor like an overturned drink. You watch me clean it all up, Mary Magdalene at your feet. Retribution for whatever sin I take on next.
My name is CRAZY. Everything is my fault and none of it is yours. I agree, my lungs bloodletting as I wonder how you are so perfect. I betrayed my own body, my own soul for this and for you. Lover, call this a suicide. Watch how I gag on all this blame, and choke. Watch me and grin. My name is GOOD GIRL. My name is I FORGIVE YOU. My name is OBEDIENCE. My name is I LOVE YOU LIKE THIS.
I learn to be frightened of you like plants learn to be frightened of gravel. My name is STUPID and WOMEN LIKE YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR PLACE. My name is SHUT UP. My name is DECLINED CALLS. My name is I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE.
My name is IT WILL GET BETTER but I face the wall with my music turned up high, the rotting memories crawling up my throat like spiders. I still see you in the corner of my eye.
My name is ___________________________________
I can’t remember who I was before this
I can’t remember who I was before you.
The closest I’ve ever been to a crime scene is the stairwell where I had my body ripped in two
(my mind still wanders there, sifting for clues).
Your Honour- I introduce Exhibit A:
Torn underwear, a bruised pelvis and a mouth full of silence
In a plastic bag for the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
To the Defence: look into my eyes and tell me I’m lying- please,
Because I can’t process the clockwork murder that man made of my own body.
I carry hot pink pepper spray like lipstick-
does that prove fear for you?
Is the fact that I can’t eat without throwing up indication enough for the horrors I endured?
Will you please protect me?
Because I can’t sleep anymore.
I can’t eat anymore.
I lost myself to him.
Exhibit B: let the jury read a phone full of messages,
Coerced consent,
“I’ll leave you if you don’t do this”, he said.
My mother asks me what I stayed for and all I can muster is a croaky
“I loved him, mama”
Ladies and gentlemen-
Won’t you pry inside me like he did?
Follow me down the tunnel he dug between my legs?
Believe me when I say I am terrified.
Icy blue eyes,
Claws for hands and
Lips that shushed me when I screamed.
Exhibit C: I offer me.
Can’t you see my body is a funeral pyre now?
Can’t you see that this is the scene of the crime?
How humiliating this process is.
How it makes me wish I never said anything at all.
how tragic we were. my therapist called it abuse last night. I don’t know how I didn’t see it. you would make me go on runs to lose weight and i’d say yes, anything for you. you’d guilt me into fucking you. call me fat and my body less desirable. how tragic it was. how I desperately wanted it to be perfect. how I watched everything we had disappear between my fingertips. I lost a part of me I thought I need. slowly. like baby teeth.
it was for the best. but it sure doesn’t feel like it.
you hurt me. convinced me that the light that possessed our bodies was liquid love. ruined me. all that brightness ruined me. i have holes in me now. darkness poking through my skin and seeping from my bones. haunted now.
it’s getting colder and I miss watching the condensation of your breath form and disappear in the air. the iciness of your blue eyes, the chill in your stare. winter boy, you said you never loved me. winter boy, I have so many questions: was it all real? why can’t you look me in the eye any more? how did you forget me that easily?
winter boy, how did our love get so cold?
I love the fact that you need to lean on me, a boy says.
He loved my vulnerability and how big I made him feel,
But would get annoyed if I’d call him in the midst of another anxiety attack,
Begging to know if he still loved me,
if he still wanted me.
He called me his broken little thing.
Wrote a play and in it I stabbed myself with a blade.
I would write him a suicide note thanking him for his bravery and his charm.
He finds me on the floor, cries over me and goes on to be a doctor,
It’s only now that I realise he never loved me.
He just loved the control.
feeling blue. like I tried to reach for something, something I felt my bones pop out of their sockets for, and it never existed in the first place. my nerve endings twisted around your name, my body tangled in your half empty desires. feeling like I’m drowning in the what ifs and unanswered questions. like. am I that easy to forget. did you ever really love me. was any of that real. were the last 8 months really that fucking empty. what a horrible mess we made, blue eyed boy. our love, a graveyard of everything we once promised each other
mustafa and I broke up today. My blue eyed boy is no longer mine. I expected tears to pour out of me, the ground to tear open, the sun to swallow herself with grief. but there is nothing. I feel nothing. he wasn’t the angel I thought he was, this picture perfect boy with a smile like gold. he was just a boy. screwed up and scared and flawed through and through.
said to me my body kept me with him. that passion overcame him and that’s he’s just a man. just a man. how could i expect him to be anything more. said to me the light in my eyes meant nothing to him. said he doesn’t see the point in staying. I felt the breath catch in my throat as we said goodbye at the edge of the river.
blue eyed boy. stay safe too.
angel-haired boy, your kisses fall on me like rain. with your shy smile and warm palms. ive slipped up and called you “baby”, crossing my fingers and hoping that you don’t think I’m crazy. angel-haired boy, turn to me and smile. speak to me in the language of lovers. let me kiss you till my lipstick turns your lips cherry red. angel-haired boy, won’t you sweeten this body like spring sweetens the air? walk over my grave, whisper my name. watch me rise from the dead to be yours again. in this life and the next.
watching you dance is like witnessing something you never thought existed till now. it’s like finding god after swearing him off. the fluidity of your body, shoulders thrown back and chin raised. the way your skin calls me, body free and mind far far away. aren’t you a miracle, baby. aren’t you like water turning into wine. I can’t take my eyes off you, this gorgeous mess of a man. the way you move with me, holding my hands like you’ll get lost if you let go. then my waist, like I’m the only thing keeping you from floating into space. wander too far from reality with me, my love. move the way you do, my miracle boy.
summer in the city drenches everything in this unbearable sticky heat,
I am here in bed,
thinking about my blue eyed boy:
the sunlight washing over anything,
a daydream in reality,
all this harshness dipped in gold.
isn’t life just misery. and mortality. and suffering.
isn’t this mangled body so tired of dragging itself forward,
waiting for the next trauma to almost-cripple it.
but like the sunlight my blue eyed boy pours his warmth over everything,
my own pocket of the galaxy,
and his sun rays touch me like nothing else has ever touched me before.
summer sticks to him,
summer sticks to me.
and all this sweaty passion is
so strong I feel it from the other side of the universe.
in the kitchen baking cake, dodging our cats underneath our bare feet singing to amy winehouse with wooden spoons as microphones. god, don’t I love you like flowers love the spring, sweetheart. god, don’t you look beautiful with your head titled back belting out back to black, sunlight streaming in through the window, with a mouth full of batter and a heart full of love.
my lover read this and turned to kiss me, said, honey, heaven is anywhere where you are. told me he fell in love with me when I danced with him to frank sinatra in his living room after our first date, hips swaying and lips turned into a crescent moon. if there was ever a moment I wished to repeat, I swear this is the one. this is the one.
my bed for one feels so empty without you here. come over, let’s eat shitty chinese and watch bad tv (which is inherently never a bad idea). kiss me. let’s dance to frank sinatra. kiss me again. sleep next to me, tell me you’ll be here in the morning. tell me you’ll meet me in my dream tonight. kiss me again and again. and again.
he sighs and whispers that he loves me.
every single wave in the river stopped to watch me blush and crashed again when he leaned in to kiss me. rippled once his lips met mine.
the deep blue reflects onto the sky, the mirror of my soul. I’m ready to drown in this moment. drown in him. our love washes over our names written in the sand
how you move me like the moon moves the waves. how you leave me breathless, like I’ve swam too far from the surface, lost in the blue of your eyes. how the riverbed of my heart crumbles when you touch me.
the kitchen smells like toast and fresh coffee. I’m at the sink, washing two mugs for us, singing softly to etta james. you come up behind me and envelope me in a tight hug, lean your mouth into my neck and say good morning angel. I make some joke about how you’re up early for a sunday and we both laugh. I turn to hug you, my hands soapy and dripping wet from washing the dishes. we kiss and laugh at the hand prints on your t-shirt. you don’t care. love is the small glow of the stove light. and the break of sunshine through the window. love belongs here, with us, on a sunday morning.
here darling. summer isn’t so bright this year so come lean on my shoulder and baptise your sorrows in the valleys of my body. I know you’re crumbling under the weight of it all so lean on me until you’re strong enough to walk again. some flowers don’t have sturdy stems, and that’s okay. doesn’t make them any less beautiful, right? let my arms be your peace until the world outside stops sounding so much like violence, the chaos and busyness of it all. come, my love. mind over matter. you’ll start feeling like yourself again, I promise. love is being the hook, line and sinker. love is being the fish and the fisherman. love is knowing that sometimes it isn’t 50/50, that sometimes I must give more than I take. but love is also knowing you’d do the same for me any day of the week.
he makes me laugh, head thrown back and eyes alive with happiness. he asks me to come closer when we sleep together, squeezes my hips and grins. he tells me I look beautiful in a black dress and heels with my hair messy and tangled but says he knows I’d look beautiful in anything anyway. he kisses my neck and my thighs and my hands and says “baby, you’re the most lovely thing my body has ever loved”. touches me in a way that makes me think, god even the sun hasn’t spilled her light on me like this.
I can’t tell you what it feels like, to have a boy blush when I kiss him, no memorised pick up lines, sauve attitude or cocky mannerisms. he’s so honest, so raw and passionate. so in love. so in love with me.
I used to think love was this anxiety-inducing dance for two, where everything had to be absolutely perfect. where things are painful and frustrating. where I have to chase and beg and call and entertain and cry and lose. always lose. but he’s right here now, sleeping on my shoulder. soft and sweet, with his arms around me.
and I think he’s going to stay.
something so quiet about his kiss, so secretive. his mouth wide open, swallowing truths and honey and hushed moans. hands that render me silent to everything, weak at the knees and falling head first into something so soft. something that’ll break my fall. passionate love that is not loud or arrogant. a love that beckons me towards it with little more than a whisper.
lavender kisses, sunshine eyes and tight hugs. heaven takes the shape of a boy with blonde hair, long legs and clumsy words. he’s got a smile as soft as his heart. smells like cinnamon and sugar. he’s so sweet in and out and i can’t think about him and not smile, can’t write about him without blushing. his name next to mine still makes my heart skip a beat.
we roll around on the carpet floor, hugging each other tightly, pulling each other ever closer. we try to stay quiet, but whispers of “I missed you so much” spoken in the language of pleasure escape. we giggle at the intimacy of it all, two lovers ready to throw themselves off the brink of everything to stay in this dream.
the way your body melts into mine, like you belong here, like we were made for this moment. we hug and laugh and kiss and say “goodbye, lover, I’ll see you later!” and never worry. we help each other with our work and plan for a future full of sunflowers and paintings and dinner by the fireplace. we’re still arguing if we should get a dog or a cat, though. that playful love.
how my words slip from my loose gloved jaw whenever ur around. how I lie on your chest and hear ur heartbeat quicken like you still get shy when I come close. how you stumbled into my life and made a beautiful mess of my mind.
wouldn’t trade you for the world, my summertime boy, wouldn’t give you away for anything. and when we roll around the carpet floor, breathless and wistful and entangled, I’m reminded why loving you is so easy.
you laugh and holy hell, I can’t stop staring. the way you throw your head back, teeth flashing like small breaks of sunshine through leaves. it makes me feel as if I’m witnessing something holy. your neck tilted like Michaelangelo’s David as you laugh and laugh and laugh, the happiness spilling out from the deepest part of you. my breath caught in my throat, stunned. you looked beautiful. god, so beautiful. blonde hair, green eyes, blushing cheeks. the poet in me smiled softly, knowing she’d found a new muse, knowing she’d happily let you destroy her. perhaps this is how Icarus felt, flying too close to the sun, knowing he’d burn and happily accepting his fate in exchange for a couple of fleeting moments near god.
handing you an orange slice and saying here eat this, my love. the intimacy of the tiniest acts of love between us are deafening. you smile, mouthful of citrus saying thank you for the sweetness, honey. we say we love each other silently, in the small things and without even saying it.
my lover used to blush and shake his head in disagreement whenever I called him handsome. emerald green eyes rolling and skin flushed in embarrassment. I could tell he didn’t quite believe me.
now, 6 months on, whenever I call him handsome he kisses my cheek and smiles. says, thank you, says I love you and squeezes me tight.
my bed for one feels so empty without you here. come over, let’s eat shitty chinese and watch bad tv (which is inherently never a bad idea). kiss me. let’s dance to frank sinatra. kiss me again. sleep next to me, tell me you’ll be here in the morning. tell me you’ll meet me in my dream tonight. kiss me again and again. and again.
my love, there’s never enough time is there? I always say to myself after I’ve left you that I wish I had kissed you harder, wish I had hugged you tighter, wish I could’ve stayed a little while longer. the clocks are just never on our side, are they?
please, leave your phone in my bag and come visit me tomorrow to get it. please, call me when I get home to check I’m okay. please, spend your evenings at mine, curled up on the couch like you belong here, next to my notebooks and coffee mugs and paintings. It seems that I don’t quite know how to midnight without you.
when I turn to leave you after I’ve kissed your cheek goodbye, every single time I wish I could run back to you and say “oh, 5 more minutes won’t hurt”. every single time, I turn to look at you and find you still waiting where I left you, smiling, saying that you love me. you love me. you love me.
8:47pm. arabic love songs. did you know that there is a whole song dedicated to you?
when you are sad, I’ll call for your mother to ask how the crescent moon can turn full again. I’ll ask her how to wipe your tears and clear the sky, let rain be replaced by sunshine.
when you are angry, I will look for your father in your eyes, soften your heart in a little bowl of rice milk. when you kiss me, I’ll taste all the anger melting away. you’ll taste like paradise, albi, like the lips of Adam tasting the forbidden apple except this is real, this is earth and we will never lose this Eden.
habibi, I love you even in pain, even in anger. I will leave lavender under your pillow so your dreams are lilac, like a sunset over the Mediterranean. I will make you a cup of Turkish tea so you remember that the world is still sweet even when it is cruel. I will tell you in our mother tongue that my heart bleeds only for you.
7:59am. did I tell you he’s kept every single one of my love letters in his wallet?
you’re right across the bridge, laying in bed and my hands are shaking from holding back from you so I’ve turned to writing. this is the way I kiss you when you’re gone.
I write so much about love because I’ve lived a life of so devoid of it till now. how can I not write about you? this beautiful break of sunshine in my otherwise cloudy world. how can I not weave through the gardens of poetry trying to pick out the most beautiful bouquet of metaphors for you?
those green eyes in the summertime. clammy hands in the winter. bronze skin shining under the sun like you’re made of gold. tender breathing when you lie next to me. the way the breeze plays with your hair in spring. it seems like the universe loves you just as much as I do.
Lover, I know I’m such an excessive woman. I bleed so many emotions, each as destructive as the last. I breathe in love and exhale anxiety, infecting everything around me with paranoia and insecurity. I bleed scarlet angry and drink bluesy sadness, so much pain and turmoil, so much misplaced passion.
It must be so overwhelming to be mine, must be like loving a charred forest that doesn’t know how to trust the sun again, mistakes warmth for destruction. Lover, please leave if you find yourself crumbling under the weight of all that has broken me. I know I’m too much and that I’ve painted the inside of your heart in splatters of ugly colours, regurgitated trauma.
But you say no. You tell my ghosts that if they’re staying, then that they’d better make room. You hold me until I am strong enough to walk again, kiss me until all the loss tastes like strength. Tell me that the inside of your heart is a masterpiece now, all those colours look so pretty. You hold up a mirror to it and say look, how can all this look anything less but human.
A love so unconditional, so relentless in its support. How lucky I am, lover, to call you my own.