Nadeen Alalami
From Midtown or Palestine
How do I keep my shoulders from contracting? Every bed is too small, too bordered up with grief.
How do I keep my limbs from crackling? All my sheets are too thin. I rip. I don't have Kubbeh skin.
How do I say I am hurt? Stunted growth makes lungs too shrunk to let out the grunt
of 'hu', tongue too short to pronounce the 'r', teeth too innocent to assert the 't'.
How do I stand? Silence.
Hate to be
where suffocation is placation.
Bones labor.
In places unspoken
misunderstood.
Carve out my toxic peace.
Mama warned me. About circles. About battles leave craters within me.
Sounds escape through cracks like thin white sheets on crackling limbs.
Mind encased within stuttering tongues and dangling clauses.
Sound becomes me.
I hate the verb to be.
I write my I my I does, bes, is my I stands alone- don't touch me.
Your support waters me down.
Lungs contracting with coughed words leaving cut scraps I can't. Let this go.
My weakness is that I want, that my head is grave for black lungs and faces without dreams. For wrinkles
on hands that used to dance and twirl now chafe.
Chafing skin means I lie.
Tolerate she sounds of nailed neurotic.
My home is without. Room unchanges.
My bed is 22 year without
comfort no fit.
Sound two sizes too small. I dream of English dragging homes.
Their sound don't fit molding bread and tongue.
Red rain and graffiti.
Refuge in my coffee.
Morning breaking fog and say hello.
But I don't recognize you.
Mind a twilight stranded within Michael Bublé gingerbread coffee.
But rooms don't change. Eyes don't change. I don't recognize you.
Witness where the sound of Fairuz is missed is foreign where Um Kalthoum touches the white of my left forearm.
I forget
but the blue of my borrowed bed doesn't change.
Nothing
I wilt into past.
Mother painting nicotine.
Along body count play
toxicity.
How many heartbeats have you wasted on me?
Functioning physically.
No, you did nothing wrong.
We
are drunken smart lips
split families.
Aggression bottoms black pint.
You were right.
I wilt into should.
Lawful good.
Latched fantasy.
Beneath Pandora charms,
needle thin scars
chase after you.
A fist dances,
crushes torso.
My hands are gardens
fits all one size.
Mind aches.
How many sighs?
I hate your eyes.
We gloss over half laughs and glances.
I can't hold my spine.
Sorry mornings blossom—Mother leaves,
harshest bubble at birth.
I twist in my womb.
We lie between wounds.
What if I never happened to you?
Plastic tubes
water cirrhosis.
No, I never think of you.
Lips numb
I can't hold my wine.
Buy another
demand smile.
Wilted into I
a void,
because the word fits better than your palm on my cheek.
I
not
you.
I
not
here
I
wilted into
obsolete.
Thick ache sells my bones.
Chapped skin batters my throat.
If we
don't speak death
then we seek.
About Nadeen Alalami
I am a Palestinian-Jordanian writer and aspiring mental health counselor, currently residing in the United Arab Emirates. I have previously published two pieces in Airport Road, a journal of creative work by students affiliated with New York University's global network of campuses and study-away sites. 'Counting Down,' a creative non-fiction work, was published in the first edition of the journal and 'Claim,' a three-part poem, was published in the fourth edition. My work can also be found in Issue Two of Rag Queen Periodical.
Wordpress: nadeenalalami.wordpress.com
Instagram: @nadeen_alalami