Tears of the Kingdom

Mini-skirt too short. Not even my tights are providing a modicum of modesty. I’m holding an anger at my body that wasn’t present six months ago. In December, I was euphoric, aligned, flush with comings. I was tying threads to end and begin and my love in time was ringing, gongs silenced and infinite and rushing. In January, I fell ill again. The start of the new year eclipsing my lush. Did I betray my body or did she betray me? Is there a betrayal? In May, I schedule an appointment. I begin to dream of a knife, the slick incisions, molding my body through its blood anew. Sometimes blood must be let. Sometimes blood is too angry, too blue and black and brown and no longer red. Red only when the air hits it right. Red, the storm of July. I adorn my body in rubies and let their heat sit in my centre; let it shake my core into movement; a volcano of self, eruption and causation and tension and chasms and seizures and eruption and causation and tension and chasms and seizures and ceramic porcelain and fibres and thrift shops and second hand trousers and I can no longer fit into my jeans and I am suffocated torn in my body trying to find a new centre under this empire, under this dictionary, under this economy. I dream of going back to a loveless country, if only so my body is returned to me, freshly laundered and breezed in the country air. Full blue skies and stars spinning. Fuck your light pollution. In Fayoum, the sky is erupting and showering and every dash is another force I will never be; every star I dream of trailing, riding like a dog with the volcano pulsing break-speed open. I am sleepy in the sun, the hanging of time lulling me into fate I reject. How many times I have stood here and howled at the earth, demanded a penance and respite. I am twenty-seven, logically: ten years have passed. A decade has blossomed and withered its face in my hands. I am looking at pore creams now, thinking of marriage. I miss it all—your hands, the gasps, your eyes. I miss your eyes more than the sky cries for the moon. Glory and gore. What have I got to prove? The movement of tectonic plates and the crumbling ozone. I adorn myself in rubies, let the heat seep back where it belongs. I lick the sweat and flames. Let down your hair. A rush of fire, cascading on my back. Even better with his hands. My body is loved by others. I am sorry to my body. I am sorry to my heart, my soul. I am sorry for this horrible anguish. I am sorry for this cruelty and the knives and the economy and the empire.

leena aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer who asks you to commit to the Palestinian liberation struggle. Read her work at www.leenaboutaleb.onl.