The Morning Knows Me by My Eyes
Whenever longing spurs dawn’s steps,
Night mirrors my sorrow—
A window and a moon,
As I scatter the ages of my face—
Seasons of waiting
Between the shores of questions and the sea of wonder.
My heart ebbs like an hourglass,
No map traversing the branches of ancients,
Nor a melody attending the seasons—
Until you rose twice upon me:
Once in the lineage of my dreams,
And again in the secret of my kohl,
Until my life became a hymn to itself.
To write of you,
I must ask the flamenco to lend me a dance,
One that erases all the wars of absence.
I must borrow my dress from the paper butterflies,
And between rain and music, inscribe the exile of my soul.
The thrill of magic whispers my name;
Roses wash in my breath.
You are the heritage of love and poetry,
Every time they stone the windows of the future,
And you are the covenant of sparrows.
I break the sea’s siege,
And improvise the sky.
My moments, silver anklets,
wrap around the legs of longing,
awaiting a promise.
And my fragrance, a forgotten winter on your coat,
awaits an embrace.
And beauty asks me,
How did it defy the claims of withering?
and rebel against time’s decrees?
I answer:
My beauty arranges itself upon your gaze.
My beauty is the path that plucked your name to join with mine.
Since they laid claim to the eyes of wagers,
my memory of triumph has faded,
But the horses of your love refuse to depart,
They never tire of my leaps or my start,
Nor do they weary of my eager neigh.
Reema Hamza is a Syrian poet.
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“My beauty arranges itself upon your gaze.” What a profound and captivating statement of intrigue and the bonds of love.
Excerpt from “Did You Get Married to Her when I was in the Mental Hospital?”, a prose poetry collection by Abigail George
“I sleep when I am tired. When there’s a hummingbird in my mouth. A starling swimming in a cup of honey on my kitchen table. I was so good at giving my heart away to the flowers, to the rain, to the sky, to the empty field behind my house. I am tired of being mentally ill, this chronic sickness, this flame, the powers that be. I watch it burn between my fingers. It tastes of Palestine. Cold stone turned into rubble. Make it go away but it doesn’t go away. Look! Wildflowers have started to grow next to my bed in the hospital, next to the bars at my window. I needed sanity in my life. Every woman needs that. So, I imagined their beauty, their growth, the growth and beauty of the wildflowers. Every woman needs that. In my bedroom, at home a cobweb covers the rose, my mother’s wizened hands and fingers as she makes my bed. She bought me a journal, a new pen, new books. She places these gifts on the table next to my bed welcoming me home. She doesn’t say that she loves me. She doesn’t say that I’ve been missed. The gifts are enough. The fact that they tidied up my room, that my mother’s made up my bed. I dance in the Imperial dark by myself, barefoot, to the lonely notes of pianist Olga Scheps. The bathwater turns into seawater. The kitchen turns into the shore. I hug the red fox bleeding into the sheet. I hand my father his teeth and towel-dry my hands. I watch him shave. We read the newspaper in the sitting room. We drink coffee. We eat cheese sandwiches. We talk. Years later I am standing in the kitchen thinking back to my first breakdown. My brother makes eggs. While he makes the eggs, he shouts at me. Those were his words and not my own, I tell myself. I ate the green olives gingerly. Olives for breakfast. They tasted delicious and cold. The men in my life, that tension and spark, didn’t know what to do with me really. Only that I could never be wife material. Only that I could never raise children. Oh, madwomen couldn’t do that. Years later, I am alone, remembering all of this, all of them, remembering the breakdown, how it changed me, how it broke me in waves. Now the kitchen turns into the shore. Now the bathwater turns into seawater. I sink. I fall. I think. I know it all. Cloud people turn to dust in the rain. Another year turns into a birthday cake. A woman brings life into the world. The father, my brother, nurtures the child. He calls his daughter “Princess”. My father loves me. He turns the wrinkled prunes and custard into a feast meal. I was loved. I am loved. I will love myself and take care of myself. It’s much too late. The clock doesn’t work anymore. Yes, it’s much too late. Now in place of the child lying face down in the bed you will find Lolita there for some reason. Griselda cleans. She tidies. She washes the dishes. Her green eyes miss nothing. Not the vomit on my floor. My dirty laundry piled high in a corner. She smokes. She is deaf. She has a daughter. I am ill now, depressed. Griselda wants to come into my room, but I feel ashamed. My body is weak and I don’t want another woman to see me like this. I want someone to fix that clock against the wall so that the hands of time could be turned back.”
Steve Jobs: “Creativity is just connecting things.”
Osho: “To be creative means to be in love with life.”
Scott Adams: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”