serafina
you were born to parents
who carried the old country on their backs
who warmed cold Canadian streets
with their immigrant full-bodied belly laughs
your grandmother’s name was serafina
her grandmother’s name was serafina
you, my grandmother, were named serafina
they handed this name down to you
in dough-kneading palms
what made you abandon it, nonna?
did the kids at school smell your displacement?
did they sink their teeth into your layers of unbelonging?
your tanned skin in January
your strong pyramid nose
you with the tangled coal black curls
did your name burn the roof of their delicate mouths?
I will not pretend to know
what being different felt like for you, nonna
or what you thought the name “sara”
would turn you into
all I know is that they tell me
I am just as you were
a living memorial
to your charming ways
before you found complacency
in the cold embrace
of a wedding ring
they tell me back then
you were more mischief
than muted matriarch
did he teach you
how to mispronounce your own name?
were his words slurred too badly
too often?
is this why our family tree has broken branches, serafina?
too few letters
and two missing syllables
To sleep side by side
In sheets we spilled secrets on
I suggest we jump
Against caution
Off mountains
Until we land
Heart first
Head last
And wake up
With the worst of each other
Not with the uneasy force of insecurity, but with the calm aggression of someone hungry to know herself. Someone whose thoughts are always three steps ahead of her heart. She bites her lips to guard her words from spilling out down her chin before her brain can choose which ones scream “stay far away” the loudest.
Sharp Mediterranean nose. Dark gypsy eyes. She carries her weight around the middle like her mother. Wisdom on her hips and shame on her stomach. Complacency lives in the softness of her underarms. Her fingers are not slender enough to wear rings. She will always stand on the left side in a photo.
You told her once that she was beautiful. She keeps that hidden underneath her tongue.
I tasted you early this morning
Ripe like blood orange
I smelled your spine
Ate your sins
Bit into you
Hungry for your faults
Mouth full of your mysteries
Tonight
I am hungry for your voice
Consumed by your absence
Starving for the scent of your stories
Your bruised-knuckle knowledge
Dripping off the rubble of my walls
Heavy with the aftershocks of circumstance
You unruly exception
You defiant definition
You molotov cocktail of a man
Tonight
We are a revolution
And as you pay your respects along my collarbone
Two hollow coffins inflate, resurrecting these morbid curiosities
Trying to claw their way out of my throat
Is her hair your favourite colour
Does she taste like a home cooked meal
After a long foreign vacation
Do you take our love home and have her try it on
Does it fit her like a costume
Hang off her body like an oversized jacket
Belonging to someone too stupid to realize
She’s a secondhand store of promises
I can’t afford to be loved at half price
one.
The first day you wake up alone
The empty space beside you will ache like a phantom limb
Drape your arm selfishly across this vacant lot
It is prime real estate
two.
A week later, on a Thursday evening
You will forget how to cook for one
Wrap the leftovers in tinfoil
Everything will taste better tomorrow
three.
When the season of your love repeats itself
You will find him in your bed again
And marvel at how he still smells the same
He will not notice you wear a different perfume
four.
Half a year and six full moons later
His hands will still haunt your dreams
You will resent how his paintbrush pointer finger and rough canvas palms
Have stained everything around you
five.
It has been six hundred and forty two days
Since the hurricane of your introduction
And the memory of him is a broken clock
Struggling to repeat its patterns
six.
You will meet for lunch at two thirty
And pretend you have nowhere else to be
Again, when he bares his teeth
You will only admire his smile
“In Afghanistan, poetry is the women’s movement from the inside.”
Haikus from the nape of my neck:
Procrastination
Is the best habit your lips
Practice on my skin
Kiss me there gently
It is where all my secrets
Swarm like summer bees
When we are threatened
With a sunrise in August
Hide there until dark
I was born with my father’s wild stallion heart
It pounds like a relentless war drum
But is easily spooked
Prone to smelling storms on even the sunniest days
And yet still, you ask to hold it
Your palms filled with the calm understanding
Of its constant need to run
And your mouth full of whispers to call it home
