I get up in the morning because I need to stretch, need to feel sleep run out from me. I get up because my days are numbered and I want today to be among the ones I lived.

So that I can make myself tea, strong and milky, or coffee, dark and fragrant. Eat my favourite meal of the day. So that when good news comes, I'll be there to hear it. So that when bad news comes I'll be among those who comfort or fight it. So that yesterday's mistakes get just a little further away, and so that I learn to live without deleting what I said, or apologising for everything I can't take back. So that tomorrow's hope becomes clearer, and all of the joys I'm yet to live are just that little bit closer.

Life will happen, whether or not I'm there to see it. So I want to be up when it happens. That's why I get up in the mornings.

leftover pasta, i eat,

the only light of the fridge blinds me.

i had so little time,

and so before throwing ,

my baby’s food,

all the leftovers,

that she didn’t take ,

and there is too much of that,

I take out, and eat.

my baby refused banana pancakes,

pasta with tomato sauce,

sweet potato, pumpkin,

french toast, greens, yogurt,

mutton and onion mash,

rice, noodles, bread, potatos.

all these in small portions,

which i hoped she’ll take later.

and she wouldn't.

all these morsals,

make up my late night meal,

before i start doing the dishes.

standing over the spread in darkness...

I’m Mesopotamia, the mother of Assur, Babylon, Uruk, the Cradle of Civilization. Once upon a time, life flowed in my veins. Life flowed in the veins of my geography, in Nineveh, in Hatra, in Palmyra, in Nippur. I was before ALL, before Nimrod, Pharaohs, Caezars, Caliphs, before ALL. My soil is sacred. Noah was born here, so was Abraham, so was Isaac. I’m Mesopotamia, the lost, the forgotten kingdom of God. I’m Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers, STILL ALIVE. Do you remember me?! Holy Writ, the Bible, reminds me...

touching touching touching

the handle of the sanitizer has germs on it from the previous hand

that needed it; and i know it’s  okay ’cause i can touch it just to clean it

(they say, it gets worse before it gets better) but i can’t take that,

so after i touch it i pump it again and then i touch it again and then i pump it

again and then i think about pouring i down my mouth when you look at me

like that. then the thoughts consume me:  like, why do we kiss?  i don’t want

your tongue anywhere near my mouth ever again; because i know there’s

millions of germs exchanged  between little contact and i wonder if you’re the

kind who doesn’t brush their teeth before and after bed and then again. then,

i watch her and every fiber of me wants to scream: take a wipe to your face, take a wipe,

wipe your face, wipe your damn face. since the makeup she paints all over her

just spreads the unyielding diseases that i know are pricking her skin and i know 

it's living just to be her dying so i know she needs to take a wipe to her face. 

so everyone else calls me crazy; mother tells me, needing help isn't easy but

it'll make me better; then there's you, you just stare at me and ask, how does this

make you feel? as you touch my hand. and i just want to pump more sanitizer

over and over and over and over and over and over and again, but then i’d touch

the top again and need to start over until i think about my heart wanting to kiss

you again but then regretting it since my mind knows better than to exchange

unpleasantries through (it's not word of mouth, it's far worse than that) the

bodies of our being. and my flesh burns from the sanitizer stinging it and

i read it kills both the good and bad germs (or so my father says) but i told him,

it can try to kill them all, but they’ll never end; so i’ll reach for the pump again

and slap it on my hands, then reach for the pump again because i just touched

the germs again. and as this keeps happening, i feel your eyes peeling the layers

of my skin back as if you’re searching for where the germs are hidden and i know

there’s something wrong with me but i can’t begin to understand it until i’m clean:

rid me of the dirty thoughts consuming me & rid me of the germs overtaking my body

& rid me of everything that isn’t naturally apart of me & then rid me of that

and let me start again.

I want that kinda-sometimes love,

of butterfly bandaids on scraped knees

and hopscotch on a cracked sidewalk.

Chipped-front-tooth-smiles

and dancing to music from a broken speaker.

In the heat of midnight, a magician, a wizard, a witch, is writing his spell, his talisman, his Mumbo Jumbo! He writes, every night, every midnight. He lives in the magic of moments. He doesn’t miss the moments. His voodoo, his charm, depends on them, the moments. His lives in the moments, in the heat of midnight moments. He only writes, makes the words, joined and joined, only writes. He's the magician of words, but his hex, is not the hex of death. He writes the hex of life, the hex of immortality. He's a magician, a wizard, a witch. His spell is the words. He is a magician, a wizard, a witch. In the heat of midnight, he only writes... he's still writing... his talisman, his fetish, is his words... He is a WRITER, a magician, a wizard, a witch...

I swam in my dreams last night

watching the light fade from the sky as

stars fell into obsidian pools, which

unfolded butterfly wings and

disappeared into the dark.

I reached out to catch a dissolving

star, but with fluttering wings the obsidian

pool made the slightest movement out

of my reach, I was unable to touch

those gossamer threads.