i

I want to cut it out of me

This ember stitched behind my ribs

This red animal in me that kneels every time a boy passes

 

The first time it happened, it was an accident

The third time, I cannot say it yet, not now

 

But I’ve since then 

Carried it like some contraband scripture

Pages smoking in my pockets

Letters blistering my tongue

 

I want to pray for it to disappear 

Like evening smoke running out of its own breath

Like the last call of a mosque whose corrugated roof gave into rain

Like my last name

Like my breath against this cold tile

Like a match recognising its own bright mistake

 

Ya Rabb, I am a sin not because my hands hold dirt

I have washed them in rivers that forget their own names

Pressed them into bread, into prayer, into fasting, into

The quiet shoulders of men

And called it mercy

Still, the dirt blooms

 

Because I think I was born this way

Because my first cry sounded like a confession

Because my mother wrapped me in a blanket

Already smelling of ashes

 

ii

There were names I whispered into the dark

Yusuf ibn Ya’qub whose beauty broke the armour of a room

Musa ibn Imran who carried fire like a child in his mouth

Omar ibn al- Khattab whose laughter split the night

Ali ibn Talib who held my wrist as if the pulse were a fuse

 

I laid them all on the prayer mat

Each syllable a small animal kicking against the knife

I said take them, take the hunger too

Take the mouth that opens like a door to a congregation whenever 

Love walks in wearing danger

 

But the floor answered with heat

The flame knew me

It leaned forward like a relative recognising blood

The first time it happened, it was an accident

The seventh time, I cannot name yet, not here

 

iii

There is dirt in all the desires I cannot control

Dust in my throat

Dust in my eyes

Dust in my behind 

Dust in my knees bent too long in sujood

I tried to bury it under recitation Ya Rabb

 

But the words germinated

I tried to drown it in silence

But silence learned my breathing

 

Cut it out of me I said

Let the blade be mercy

Let the wound be a mouth that refuses to speak again

 

Instead the fire kept naming me

It called me son, it called me sacrifice 

It called me the ram and the mountain

 

I climbed anyway

I brought the wood on my back, brought the spark in my chest

Brought every boy I ever loved folded into the lining of my coat

 

iv

At the top I lay down willingly

I offered my throat, the soft country of the belly

The trembling orchard of the heart 

But when the knife hovered

The sky did not send a hand, only wind

Only the smell of smoke becoming morning

 

v

I understood

The fire was never outside me

It was my prayer learning to speak

It was this body refusing obliteration 

It was love, not calamity

Burning its own permission into bone

 

All of me 

A palimpsest

 

So I rose, still smoldering

I gathered the names back into my mouth

I carried the altar down the mountain

 

Ya Rahman, let the fire stop

Or teach me 

How to live 

As light