I had a dream last night You were in it Fuzzy, unclear But the hook was there That had plucked you from somewhere Inside my head or maybe From some deserted place in my heart It wasn’t an act Of which I was aware I had no say In the furtive way You appeared around me again Even if you were phantasmic, chimerical In that time, you were real A swaying, decaying bridge coupling The physical and the figmental
It left a bitter aftertaste In my mouth when I awoke I brushed my teeth With renewed vitality (My dentist would be happy at least) I spent the day going over the locks I had put around certain memories These escapes Even in my dreams Made me restless, agitated me When I was awake Tonight I will have my dose Of vitamins and minerals (They promise all sorts of well-being) So that when I dream The bolted doors inside of me Keep holding their integrity
But even if they lose their might Releasing spectres of the night I know that in my waking hours In dissecting and determining The cryptic whys and wherefores Of night-garish visages Invading, distressing me These dreams, these unbidden images Have already lost their sting They have shed their whipping wings To fly at me when I’m asleep Through all of my monster-proofing And so deep down inside Something tells me that tonight I will dream of other things.
I see the sea, a mottled grey As she holds on,just barely To a hazy vestige Of her tranquil turquoise sheen It was just an hour ago That she wore her majesty Cloaked in all her blues and greens But even she This creature of serenity Has her days when she shifts Off her axis of evenness When she fusses and fumes in choppy tones Sending currents of fear through mortal bones Her discontentment carried in The surf that comes crashing in To where I stand holding my breath In my bare feet, toes inward-crept She sloshes, washes over me Her touch, gritty-soft As she caresses me Tough-lovingly For behind her fearsome gaze And beneath her maddened mien She’s still the nurturer, the queen.
The streets cook in the yeasty sun The concrete melting in little mirages In the corner of my eye, I see The vegetation sizzle on the sidewalks The tops are over-done, burnt The undersides stick to the earth In a grotesque masquerade Of some now forgotten vital bond Roots and soil cling together Like dogged carcasses to the bone The street dogs lie half dead Parched tongues loll out now and then A sluggish scrape against the grit And they escape Back into the desert caverns of their mouths I pick my way along the street Shimmer-sharpened by the heat I feel it reach Hellish fingers through my soles Heat-divining for my soul I hurry on but Hades’ torrid lick Is already on my swollen lips His hoary sizzle has found its mark My tar-seared feet slow to a crawl My essence drips out in burns Upon oil-scorched temples and brows Down my thighs and my neck I cannot move another step I sit on a steaming bench To drench the rest of me In the quenchless, wrenching sun.
July has come round again Another birthday It’s been twelve whole years Since you went away A decade and two years it’s been And I want to tell you how these years Have touched me After you said your last goodbye
The first two were unhappy, desolate I had regular nightmares I’d go to sleep thinking of you And of those last few difficult days The ritual memory was oddly cathartic Even as it hurt, cutting deep Ripping my heart out every night Before I lay me down to some semblance of sleep
And then through some blessed interlacing Of our two realms you came to me in a dream You were well again You were whole and you were happy And I held your hands Even as you held mine We laughed with joy as we whirled around
And since then My broken heart has gently Laced its red-blue pieces together With gold and purple lines I now find you in visions and dreams That are more serene So real, that when I awake You are somehow still around A heartbeat away, an echo warm and sweet A lingering touch upon my cheek
I look at your picture on my phone My heartstrings wrap around your form It’s the next best thing to perfection In our world of love and loss And so here you are shimmering Lighting up my memories again Twinkling eyes smiling away Making me catch my breath As I whisper dearest, a happy birthday.
I hear the leaves rustle in the breeze The gust picks up slowly, gradually I hear the rattle of a window The one that lies loosely in its frame Like a watchful sentry Announcing the entry Of a wayward breeze That rolls in through its screen To knock upon the door At the end of the corridor
I walk out of my bedroom into the lounge The sentinel window Is now trembling, recoiling Rattling its pane Warning of rain That will soon moisten Its face; gushing Rushing, tearing The dust off old memories Renewing the pain
I see the first flash of lightning and then The thunder breaks The storm has arrived I look at it through the window Now lying quietly in its frame Soon the glisten of its pane Swells into a stream flowing Down silently as I sit quietly With the sweet ache Of old memories again.
I sought you out, you seek I did Your sort I ardently sought out In movies on my Netflix screen Your type I read in pages typed And bound in pale lilac string Lying deep beneath secret things Amid beloved, unpublished things Your form I conjured in my dreams From lovely, daytime fantasies You lived in my gleaming realm Of poignant impossibilities Your mold I formed in my head Gently the mould spread and spread Amid beautiful, decaying things Covered in gossamery what-ifs In golden morns and velvet nights I looked for you, I sought you out
Until yesterday
When I saw you clear as day You looked through me and then away The likes of me you didn’t like You sought a whole new other sort I was no part of your reality But I looked and looked silently Seek you still, I do sometimes I still urge for your bewitching kind But now doubts riddle that enterprise Few are the days when I look for you Fret-free, with stars in my eyes Those days are still the most sublime But sublimity is not for me Its glittering garb is too profound Peace is now what I seek out Still, old habits of the heart Are damnably hard to put down So keen for you my secret love And seek you still, I do sometimes.
(This piece is about limitations, both physical and mental on women. It is about a woman dealing with the biology of her own body in an environment that has disgraced and stigmatized it.
This piece has also been accepted as part of the 2024 Women Scream anthology, a platform that unites voices for violence against women and is celebrated on international women’s day across a number of countries).
Give me something to sleep Just for a while, a few hours maybe
What’s bothering you? This thing, this ungodly thing I’m sullied, impure again
Impure again? My insides are bleeding anew
Why are you whispering? Because it’s this dirty secret bound to me It keeps violating, assaulting me With such ravening regularity I have to beg my sister to visit (She has that freedom, that liberty) So she can come bearing these Brazen packs of sordid things The stigma! the cruel savagery Of having my womb constantly Bleed and weep and shame and sting
I see the look on my husband’s face When I can’t make his meals In Ramzan, or on eid (I can’t even iron his prayerful shalwar kameez*) I still recall - I cringe and I cry at the memory I couldn’t attend my little one’s very first Ameen* I had taught him his Alif Laam Meem* I couldn’t say I couldn’t tell them to move the day How could I! I hid in the shadows while my mother-in-law Did everything Hugging my child Lavishing him all the while With maternal love, where my love should have been Mine I had put away, hidden, unclean Until I was done with this bane But the occasion has gone like so many others When I was stripped of the soul of a mother That precious moment passed me by Even my father-in-law watched from jaundiced eyes His expression… such disappointment - such contempt The embarrassment! The torment! I wanted to die
The first fast is tomorrow and I bleed again I’m wretched, repulsive, tainted But I’m tired of hiding, melting away In the darkest recesses of the house I’m tired of playing cat and mouse With my dignity, my sense of self I’m tired of becoming invisible For a week every month, ceasing to be A mother, a wife, a human being I’m tired of fading, becoming a wraith I’m tired… I’m tired of this unholy plague
Give me something, something to sleep Give me something to fly me away On the quiet wings of eternal release.
Image: April Mansilla
*Shalwar kameez: tunic and pants worn by men and women across the greater Indian subcontinent.
*Ameen: term used to signify the event/ celebration when a child has finished reading the whole Quran.
*Alif, Laam, Meem: Alphabets that occur in the Quran. In this context, teaching the Quran with all its semantics.
I see the swing again Not the same but very like The one I used to fly upon A lifetime ago, I’m caught In a clutch of rememberings It was my first day of school I was the quiet one, so shy The teacher would be inclined To ask another little girl To take me under her fledgling wings A few minutes before The 11 o’clock bell would ring All kinds of dreadful things Would grip my little heart It would hammer in its cage As time closed upon the break Even as I rushed towards her desk Don’t forget! please don’t forget! To pick a friend for me today!
I’d come back home tired out My little head would pound and pound I couldn’t understand it then But I would go out and reach For the sturdy ropes of the swing As it rocked gently to and fro Waiting to hold me in Its reassuring cradling I’d swing and swing and swing up high Chase out all the daytime angst With every forward rush With every surge up to the sky I’d breathe in anew and fortify Until my sore heart soared again I couldn’t understand it then This self-soothing, this consoling
Life went on, its ebb and flow I duly shifted to my swing That I always found along the way Into its vital comforting The whoosh of the wind a lullaby A hypnotic whisper in my ears To let my troubles fall away To just fly and fly and fly up high As I kicked off into the liquid sky
When you went away I stopped looking for my swing That hollowness, that grief Those are things the lulling breeze Could not fill and cannot ease Their echoes ring, as they wring At heartstrings that pull them in I will not let them fall away Steeped, replete with memories I now carry all of these Forever and eternally Unwilling to set them free Upon a beclouding and benumbing breeze.
The day you went away Something died inside me too I thought that with time In the pithy wisdom of poets And cure-alls of self-help books In the endless cycle of the days That I’d come back to life To some semblance of pulsing life But I didn’t And that’s ok Isn’t the end of self the next terminus anyway?
The formidable ego that relentlessly keens For fantasies of euphoric times Trapped in snow globes Frozen for life Crashing like cannon balls Into raw hearts that survive That part of me died But that dead part of me Buried somewhere In the thick of my atoms that ricochet And my lungs that tirelessly inhale Is now also my quiet side A stoic, eternal, abiding thing Cloaked in The resolute infinity Of ceaseless serenity
In that sepulcher of my being There is no distraction, no noise No daunting end-times tunnels of light The lifeless part of me Is nerveless, unfaltering Impervious to everything Everything but the little flame You left behind when you went away Glowing softly just beyond The stillest, deadest part of me For me to gently find my way.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 