A visit to a forcibly-exiled bride

Appeared in Clarion #2, Feral Angels Press, 26 September 2024. 

A visit to a forcibly exiled bride

By Khalil Sima'an

The vine in our parents’ garden no longer grows over the shadows of the house. Since you departed, as the bride of exile, the trees ceased to grow in that garden. Only a single palm, with youthful arrogance, overlooks the house. And youth is all we left behind when we escaped the suffocating existence in a walled homeland and its circumscribed skies. Like exhausted migratory birds, we were dispersed to different continents. And, like migratory birds, we feel the instinctive urge to migrate back. But, do free birds ever migrate back to a cage?

I. How I shall find you today, I don’t know.

This summer day, I come from far away

and find you shrouded in autumn leaves;

under your skin slithers a blue vein

of clouded pain; fear holds your cold hand

like a little orphan, and you tremble,

choke on purple nightmares slithering

like veins through the skin of your eyelids.

II. How we shall walk together, I don’t know.

Shall we slice the darkness into measured

strides of reluctance? In this darkness

you walk beside yourself, like a shadow

walking on a spiderweb stretched

between the stars, and you hold my arm,

lean on me, lest the heavy burden

you bear fall on the frozen face

of a distant moon of exile.

III. How to unify four continents, we don’t know.

We wonder how we diverged and debate

how Distance mirrors the imagination

and reflects the echo of turbulence,

how Time always emerges victorious

in the ticking of wrinkles and decay;

as disillusion strikes, we lose taste,

the vanity of dreaming dominates

the longing for a unifying place.

IV. How we will find hope today, I don’t know.

But in your voice there is a childhood

of warm bread, salt and olive oil; your voice

is soothing to the sparrow in my heart;

your smile, thin and crisp, a shriveled leaf

on a green soul. But when you really smile,

hope beats its wings and takes off leisurely

like a white swan flying over a lake

of chemo fluids, liters of anti-

venom, injected into your veins

to counteract the covert, toxic bite

of an unknown, unclassified beast.

V. How I shall depart alone tomorrow,

I really don’t know.

I shall pack my garments like a priest

after a Sunday mass;

I shall secure my suitcase with a lock

of spineless reluctance.

My final destination is beyond

all imagination.

VI. This final night, I kneel and pray

for the continents to converge

on a single dot on my heart,

for distance to shrink into my fist

like a ball, and for time to stretch

once we meet again, anywhere.

At the Great Altar of Exile,

I’d slaughter Distance and Time,

offer them for the salvation

of a forcibly-evicted bride;

alas my dearest, we both know:

red wine is no sacred blood, bread,

no heavenly sacrifice; for

there isn’t even a single

god for the forcibly-exiled.