To Be the Child of the One Who Moved Away

means not having the context
for that one time

that the laugh, the inside joke

is rooted in

it tastes like... missing out

on the recipe meant to pass

hand over hand

in a kitchen continents

and languages away

it sounds like elders

who tell you you'll never

understand their brother

or cousins who mention

there was no way your

father's siblings could

have known about the abuse

he and you faced alone

on stolen land built out

by stolen lives within borders

created by people who

hate the tones of the earth in his skin

I recently learned that the shape

of "خانہ بَدوشْ" is the weight of

carrying home on your shoulders

I can't imagine a space so free

of that gravity

that I can float across the

distance of WhatsApp to say

any version of I love you and I

fight for you, but I also fight for me

because I did not consent

to this life between bordered lands

and I sometimes wonder what

it would be like to consent out

of carrying home on my shoulders

to rest

to be loved, not as a noun born

out of expectation but a verb

an adjective a synonym to creating

the context

for that one time

that our shared laugh, our shared joke

is rooted in

to be the child of the one who moved away

is a curse and a blessing I

would not choose to share

with anyone

to carry home on your shoulders

is a curse and a blessing I 

would not choose to share

with anyone

-----

every year the holidays remain a sucker punch to the gut. from the intact families wove've invited me in, to my solo binge watching sessions soaking in the quiet of being alone. I love my Pakistani family terribly. ferociously. longingly. confusingly. I love them across continents, countries, cultures, cultures, languages, and the ways in which white European colonization poisoned the lands across the world that we live on. I've both been told that I'm loved, to reach out at any time, and that I'll never fully understand my own dad, that the family didn't know my white bio mother harmed both of us because you can't hear abuse on a phone call, or through the emails she monitored, or in the body language around a table of home cooked food. I am loved as a noun, as Kariem's daughter, as accomplishments. as the ripples on the surface of water. 

I long for, I'm dying to be loved as a verb, as an adjective, as a synonym, as sometimes I trip over air and I struggle to stay mentally and emotionally alive, as a wave, as a whole ocean of mosaics of thoughts and feelings and experiences and personality. and I feel like I no longer know how to bridge the distance. the wright of carrying home on my shoulders feels like I'm treading water beyond where my tippy toes can find the floor. how is it possible to hold this much buoyancy, to maintain grace, to continue trying when it feels like any life rafts have already floated into the horizon. 

to be the child of the one who moves away, is to share entire bodies of water with the ones you love with no guarantee your wakes will ever more than collide with each other, with no guarantee you'll ever truly be able to understand the shape of the love for the one who moved away.

The Revolution Will Not Be Instagram'd

to the melanated queer folks, the femme folks, the
folks behind the scenes facilitating, supporting,
healing, loving through homophobia, transphobia,
and misogyny rooted so deep at every level. to the
ones whose names history actively erases, and the
ones whose contributions today go unnoticed,
under-appreciated.

to the ones who continue breathing and holding and
carrying space in pockets to offer when and where
and how they can. to the listeners who uphold
boundaries through conflict. 

to the ones who fight for liberation not for social
status or hierarchical power or to be in the history
books but instead because they believe in safety
and wellness. they believe that through
decolonization there is a re-emergence of love. 

thank you

thank you for facilitating and supporting and healing
and loving, despite being tokenized and only valued
through men who amplify you. despite being
tokenized in death, rather than received and uplifted
in your life.

it is you all who give me hope. you all who don't do it
for status or power or to "lead" others. you all who
do this because there is no other way than to try
again and again and again.

She/They

I haven't seen myself in a mirror for a while.

There's a deep blue ocean between my self and

this flesh and these bones and sometimes I sit

on a foot until it falls asleep and wait for the

sensation to remind me that I'm alive

not quite associated with this body

but not quite free of it either.

what is this bodily space, it's not my own

today it was a mode of transportation

and it was someone's projections

of sex and intimacy, there was

nothing I had to do about it

could do about it other

than exist in a space.

I've lost the words to the poem, the one that

screams in a voice harsher than that time

my body was my trap played against me

the poem that waxes on about how I

am everyone's reflections but my

own, my identity constructed in

response to curves I didn't

consent into and culture

that's continents away

and the invisibility of

my (un)wellness.

it sneaks up on you, like the night fall of winter or

maybe it lures you in with a song of placement

and explanation for harm like "they just can't

help themselves, so they help themselves to

you" and I just want to know how, how can I

see myself in a mirror, see my self in a

mirror when every time I introduce

myself, anees she her hers it's

merely just a parroting back

of their reflections and

experience of a body

I don't belong to.

want to know what question I want to be asked?

"who are you, truly?" I'm weary of a language

where my introductions invoke shared

experiences of nonconsensual touch

and my name is a whole story not

for you to mispronounce with

extra words or references 

to a spice, I am not a thing

for you to taste, a recipe

you found in a book

and I'm femme as

in my hope, my 

love grounds 

me.

not she her hers as in it's been zero days since a

man touched me in public without my consent and I

spent hours thinking about what to say and how to

say it to define myself a little less by the social 

reflection of smallness and curves that men believe

grants them permission to this physical body.

but queer and femme as in something more solid

than bones remembers a time when it wasn't like

this and yearns for when it's not like this again and

isn't sure if it's around the corner but will keep

quietly whispering poems to my self in the mirror

until this physical body is ashes and dust.

NoBody

what’s this body,
it’s not my own

it’s a vessel, a safe
harbor that empty 
place you pour stories
into for safekeeping, a 
temporary placement 
for cummings and going’s

it’s a pillow, I’ve never
quite understood my
self as anything other
than your gendering of
soft curves and softer
boundaries that for so
long were violated with
hands and then stares
and then 

it’s a placement, or it’s 
a bookend where your 
expectations are meant
to be upheld, nestled,
reinforced within the 
distance between myself
and my gender 

I don’t know what it
means to be 

It’s a safe harbor
A pillow 
A placement 
Book ends if you will 

It’s boundary less 
It’s boundaries 
It’s his property 
Or her assumption 
Or their right 

Why do you cast shame onto 
Me and mine, my curved and
My hard edges - without asking
what led us here. 

what's a body 
if not my own