Vermillion 

Nothing to read here: just the truth  

      of a man living in a world desperate  

to misunderstand him. When I told Hassan  

     that I visited my mother’s grave & she begged me  

to tie the loose loop  

     between my brother & me, he laughed  

I saw traces of mockery in the corners  

of his eyes. Dejected, I told him the words  

     were metaphorical. What else do you 

expect me to do? The only place a poet  

litters his gospel & people wash it  

with the waters of empathy is in his poems.  

My girlfriend, the only living woman I  

     love to madness, asked what is  

capable of murdering our relationship. 

—My mother, I said.  

—May she rest in peace—she who is  

capable of killing this love my breath 

depends on but couldn’t do it, she said. 

In the night—when I leaned my lips on  

hers, my middle finger lost between  

her thighs—I told her I visit mother’s  

grave & we talk.  

—Stop, she said, totally rapt in the sea  

of her moans, else, they’d call you, my 

love, a lunatic.  

Ya Ilahi, I desperately want to open  

     my breast & show her places in the  

chambers of my heart where the blade 

     cut so deep she could bury the stone 

of her disbelief in one of them. I’m a  

wreck & my world (read: this woman I 

live for) is refusing to accept my mother— 

     the woman who defies death so  

she’d be a balm to this ruination I  

        call life.