“Read”: Baring Witness (2023)
Read
At the sight of trees
How mothers broke to breed
Earthing dreams from rivers to seas
Read
How a reverence gets set ablaze
Hatred taints
Your heart spins and land remembers
Our silence is complicit, hearts are faint
People game away at human dignity
Searching gratification in moral baselines
Facts are not accounted for
Entire family trees bared witness
Baring the price
In the name of the birds in exodus
the beings displaced
Use your senses, Read
Swallow your pride and read beyond the lines
At every hemisphere your jugular vein works
for release
To return the gas you need
inwards, gradually,
To return your weeps
Oxygenize your peace
Painting your deeds
Helping—
To seek a gate
75 years of bad blood
Torture “cleansing”
In the name of liberty
“Most certainly one exceeds all bounds once they think they are self-sufficient
Surely to your Rab you will return” (Qur’ān, 96:6-8)
Dear beloved, you were allowed to embody so little of this world’s vastness.
You are Seen.
Hold your heart as it beats.
Lift your chins, hold your key.
Feel the ground beneath your feet,
Speak and Read,
A simultaneous breath.
This article originally appeared in Volume 44, Issue 7, published November 28, 2023.