I tend to forget my rawest form,
me in all my flesh,
in every extremity,
I forget often how many have died around me,
How clay people were snatched in front of my eyes,
Into another type of soil,
How we grieved for them, or weren’t allowed to,
I wore my hijab,
Crowds of hands lifted,
Then Ama left,
Over night,
It was if temporarily feathers had been gifted to me,
Kept me warm from the cold of this life,
She in her words, her stories, her love,
Had left without a speck of dust,
Just vanished to the other dimension,
I was left,
continuing only with the backbone she left me with,
I forget my skin is leathered from all the beatings,
My bones are harsh,
Ensuring the body does not fall,
My tongue sharp, yet still the sweetest of mangoes,
I am a handful of bananas,
able to stay ripe even through the droughts,
Even when she starved us,
Do not dare cross my heart,
My spirit will not let you forget me,
Your eyes cannot undo what they have seen,
I am the roughest of lovers,
Broken in all the wrong ways,
Yet I use alchemy to meld away the wrong,
Forage the bad into good,
manipulate my own hardwiring in effort to reignite,
To allow the Phoenix to dance once more,
When I move I allow every limb to release,
my arms and legs my own,
My spirit shaking,
I let go.
I have no parents,
and its haunting.