“Healing is gossip where I’m from. Look how the sadness leaves me seraphic “ — 
from author’s unpublished poem (Unerasable)

I've learnt not to glorify the darkness poured to the ground—
which is the threshing of grief:
one way we tuck our loins in the abundance of a riot.

think of the body as a dear relative.
think of the riot as an albatross, hanging over your lineage.
see how silence barrel through the ribcage,
as a raging susurration—whispered into a family tree.

a prayer, placed in the gullet of a lad.

how many deads do we need to shoplift a miracle?
how many more headstones do we press into blood-soft clay, 
to letterhead a loved one on the bright side of pain?

at full moon, siblings sought newer ways to attain breathlesssness—
roping their nude bodies to a fan.
their innocence, met by the gnashing of blades.

each bloodshot lips, plagued with silence on a vast portrait—
plastered to the gate of my ancestry: a metonym for torment.

I come from a long line of men roping their infants, 
to toss in between curse words—as a collapsed comma.
men, who solve into joy & arrive wet-ripe with wanting,

boys, who pace & outpace death in its breathless endeavor 
towards un-aliving what promises to be dead.

my depression worsen with each Arabic spell.

when Pa script alif on my teeth, 
I crack a rib—clueless of my own magic,
tongue-lift a bottled chorus laying reckless as a sujud.