A Poem
By Sarah Asmali
I hear my Senegalese neighbours at the end of the passage
The sound of jovial French moves through the air
Like sultry dancers floating down festival parades|
I yearn to join them
Their banter when they sit around the pool
They remind me of how I have forgotten to play
Becoming the playground bully instead
Mirroring the victim inside of her
Only to exist to someone in some way
Even if it meant as a projection unfamiliar to myself
At points like this I died a little
Shedding lush leaves
Quicker than the seasons
My roots shriveled
Bleeding nectar into her mouth
Bark pale with anxiety
I felt alone
Alone because I still remembered
The message from the womb
That life is to be celebrated
That I was celebrated
That when I arrived they cried with tears of joy
My cells remember the love
That fused through my mother
I came out screeching
Wanting breath
Lungs gasping to live
Eyes wanting to see
To have eyes to see
Only to be blinded again
Taught to silence our beating hearts
Finding harmful habits to feel reborn
To feel the warmth of the present moment
Like my mother’s arms
Needing to be held again
To be held with love
Whether my heart beat fast
Or my heart beat slow
So I ground my feet into the earth
Trying to connect to the way in which the grass remembers to live
I run hard, wild and barefoot
Aching but feeling
I glide my fingers across my own sweat
Aroused to feel the effect of a racing heart
I open my eyes underwater
Captivated by the release from my own lungs
I stretch and bend to new rhythms
To break old patterns
To reclaim past memories
To find new ways of being
To feel growth in the change
To know that I am not limited
to the construct of what walking tall should look like
That I can turn myself upside down
And walk tall on my hands
That I can spread and split my groin across the earth
To feel a glimpse of the pain my mother felt when she gave birth to me
I watch the eruption of boiling tea
So that I am reminded that everywhere are forms of bubbling glory
That life is everywhere
It continues to move and breathe
With or without me
I find stillness in my mind
Observing thoughts as if they didn’t belong to me
But sometimes I’m haunted by the voices that kill me
That murdered my elders
You taught me to trust my own voice;
the beating of my heart
I see the beauty in your trauma
The arched back of it
A curve I want to run my finger down
You enlightened me to my rituals
My rituals gave you hope
You used them to breathe life
You used them to remember the beauty of your own birth
And I could feel less alone again
Connecting to my past
Connecting to where I came from
Connecting to the truth
I could feel less alone again
Connecting to my breath
I could feel less alone again
Knowing that I was sharing the same breath as you
I could feel less alone again
Knowing that the hands of your healing
Could hold the hands of my healing
And together we could find our way back home.
