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.