“And do not spend wastefully. Indeed, the wasteful are brothers of the devils.” [Quran 17:26-27]
When they ask how I used my father’s money to buy [ ],
I will say: daughter is a synonym for regret. We were sincere
college girls, exhaling the after-morning musk
of our jilted mistakes. We fucked up. What else
can I say? We kissed everything with a knife’s heat.
The poetry was supposed to be about the snow dust
on the windowsill of the studio apartment where I practiced
generosity with other sweat-stained bodies. Yes, me
and my derelict girls. We hardly got a text back and thus
our Plathian hymns. Our friendship based on how evenly we split
the [ ]. How dangerous we could make our sadness
sound. We mistook romance for fortuity—the [ ]
pulling up on his bike was really only five feet tall. And he fell.
But he knew how to unhook a [ ] with one quick hand. At least
that’s what he said. Of course I thought of my father. But it wasn’t
fair. I wanted things too: guilt subsumed; a dirtied mirror.
Killing yourself was just the sound of someone else’s music next door.
There’s one photo in particular: JD with a [ ] in one hand
and [ ] in the other. Blanket to the chest. A stranger’s house
on Halloween. A smile goofy enough to make me pay
the difference and someone always went home crying.
I liked the clean breaks. I woke up
to nothing. America was a sink I could fill.
People clung to your arm so hard it almost broke off.
Maha Ahmed
Maha Ahmed is an English Literature & Creative Writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Grist, The Adroit Journal, 580 Split, Rusted Radishes, The Recluse, and elsewhere. She loves talking about the Arab-American diaspora, late capitalism, World Literature, translation, and inter-religious history. She is currently the poetry editor at Rusted Radishes and absolutely adores the gig. Find her on twitter @mahaahmed81.
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Maha Ahmed#molongui-disabled-link
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Maha Ahmed#molongui-disabled-link
