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the articulation of my vertebrae

by Orooj-e-Zafar

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1.
my body is beautiful– wait, no, fuck. try again with more conviction this time. my body is beautiful; its curves ascend more than the rugged Alps, they fall like contradictions from a politically incorrect statement. my body is the pavement of my mind’s highway but these flyovers keep collapsing, I’m trapped under the debris of esteem (not self-esteem, that requires a mind-heart team effort). my lips have kissed all kinds of royalty; my hands have polished enough crowns and sworn fealty to the right people. My loyal legs once opened wider for you to go deeper but I don’t like thinking about that, I don’t like talking about you. start over and this time, mean it. my body is beautiful; have you seen how my hipbones curve like wishbones? (when you find me stuck between your gravestone-teeth, will you promise to break me homolytically?) have you seen how my thighs purge out of society’s idea of perfect, how my knees have blackened with mainstream scrapings of a childhood too far from me to keep waiting to come back, no, haven’t you seen my concave belly? haven’t you seen how its crests remind you of a siren’s home; have you not seen how my ribs kiss my skin with enough love to keep it close? my body is home, my body is beautiful. is this real enough to remember? I think I’ve made enough knots to make this barbed-wire-eulogy seem a little less of a fallacy. can you pick the specks of dishonesty out of my eyes, please and explain to me why my body is beautiful when my thighs keep wanting to kiss their inner diameters? can you please tell me why it’s okay for breakfast to cross over into spit and acid? can you please tell me it’s okay to feel like you need to stop touching yourself because if anything else, owning myself feels like I’m raping myself and saying, “I am beautiful,” is about just as easy as fixing my aching vocal chords; I cannot make myself come to believe that this body is beautiful.
2.
i was once six years old and i was once cradled in the tired arms of a desolate woman, who could only cry and she'd call sometimes, "Cass," she'd say, "baby, i've been drinking again and your father left - baby, he left and i can't find him." i'd put her books away then and try to find the pills she never wanted to take. "do you think he's hiding, Cassandra?" "no," i'd say, and tie her hands; i was so much more of my father than i would have liked to be, "he told me you need these." "oh no i don't, baby." "yes, Mama you do." poppoppop goes the goddamned weasel, but now, just in her mind-bitten mouth. it was silent in my room and silent when she slept but i was only six and the world made less sense to my squinted eyes and disoriented speech because the night was her haven - i was her haven - she screamed and turned enough to make the earth's rotation seem slower and hours get longer and the tick drag tock drag tick fucking tock seemed more and more interminable than the first. it was never silent when i was six years old. i was once six years old and swallowed so many words, i had to hold every syllable with my father's Adam's apple - it was only his apple and my mother said she tasted it - he once told me that a man is defined by how many words he can put up in a fight; he wasn't much of a writer or a fighter, for that matter, but to my surprise, he'd only hold me tighter, closer and soon, never again. "baby," he'd say, "your mama's just been playin'. you know how it is," and i'd nod my chubby head. "she's just so tired from loving you so much and loving me so much; sometimes you have to stay away, you know?" "i think so," i'd whisper, wishing i really didn't. "you'll come back soon right?" i wrapped my rolled arms around the warmth of his neck, gripping the silence his words could never say. his apple bobbed and i couldn't tell why, he'd shake a little, then look at me and sigh, "never again, Cassandra. not this time." and i suppose it was only to ready my cavalry; i wasn't always equipped for the battles i had to fight, even when i knew that things were never going to be right between them again. so when i was six years old, i hid away books before my mother swallowed all the words she needed to talk, to sing and say, "baby i'm fine," to tell me that dinner was always going to be ten minutes late, and that the empty head seat at the dining table was only a reminder of all the words she missed, of an apple only she had kissed, a silly intimacy she missed with delicacy stringing a bracelet woven out of all the memories she drank away. it burned one day when dinner was late. it rose in the air and flew away.
3.
roll a list of statistics about how much time has run out, to me and I will write each second to have ever passed, a love note. tick, I will miss you, tock, you are important. tick, you were the only thing standing-- tock, between us and now it's over. tick, tock, you are still important. tell me that the in-love are never forgetful and I will answer with a corridor of now switched-off phone numbers that have kept me static and dizzy. it isn't easy to lose track but I'll pull back every knot out of our string theory bond to sleep tonight; you will too. read every book I have given myself to in holy matrimony and I will find every word, page and chapter you consist of, enough reason to read you again; I will always find ways to love you again. but sing all seven notes to me, say no more exist and I will make my piezo-electric crystals tease and tremble ultrasound till it is heard because everything should be heard, even when I feel small and hide the things I let simmer inside me to make small talk; I will not feel it then. dance with me and say, no two left feet can synchronize and amplify and I will trip with finesse, make the breaking sonorous of my cheekbones elegant and swallow chipped enamel till you retract your entirely true statement about my catastrophic fluidity. I will not show you my hands; their wave-particle duality only anchors my will to carry on. whisper isochronous nothings to the small of my spine, bend me into a submissive contortionist and I will secrete strength from my practiced immunity till it is rigid again - until I am rigid again but do not grieve. I polish unconditional bed knobs and door handles for those left behind for the minutes you will live for me-- meaning. ask me for the time and I will tell you, I have never had any - I am honored but I never kept it safe - I lost it to bickering tour bus foreigners and letting favorite songs complete their audio tenure and sending telepathic signals to every moment that has passed; tick, thank you. tock, please come again. tick, I cannot appreciate you in time-- tock, may we meet again someday. tick, thank you for staying. tock, thank you, for staying.
4.
i. to the itch of mind hives, the crimson of their aftermath and the sandstorms of internal debris after-- fuck you. my chipped, stubby fingers, swiss-cheese-ravished mind and blasphemous crying-to-sleeps are owed to you, old friend. ii. to the lonely side of my single bed, the vacancy in my shelves for needed but unknown occupants and the nerve wreck of a shivering impulse i have become-- i love you i love you i love you; this is a promise to yourself you will only learn to break twenty times over. iii. to you, who writes and writes more cringes and slammed doors than i could muster and make pretty, naked, poetic, shallowly misinterpreted and loosely connected, i am still here. i am still writing. iv. to my only bonne nuit rouge et de l'amour mort, fuck you especially; actually, i hope death greets you with more familiarity than you greet it with and waits at the bottom of the river for you, when your lungs are strangers to air and your body rejects survival like foul breath. to my only bonne nuit rouge et de l'amour mort, fuck you especially; v. to the incantation of maternal instincts, alienated utter fear of loss, driving and water-- i am fine. my shoes numb my feet and the hair on my head makes it heavy but you, mother, you are doing just fine. (i have enough, you are enough) vi. to myself, standing by may make you the inflicted on (it is better to be this way), but it doesn't make you a hero either. you are tall but you never stand it; you are beautiful but you never act it. you are a boulder curve that's lost it and you are better than this. vii. to the mirror, to the weigh scales, to the whispers in hallways; viii. to the cousins-entitled-to-be-better- and-forever-un-me, to the letter from my grandfather collecting dust in my memories, to the prettier, fairer bullies, to everything i could never please, i am still here. i am still writing.
5.
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released October 25, 2014

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Orooj-e-Zafar Islamabad, Pakistan

I love stories and pouring meaning into everything humans do.

learning to be softer since '96.

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