Author: 7ala Abdullah

Hala Abdullah is a poet and a feminist from Saudi Arabia. She has founded and is currently the co-president of the Writing Club in Riyadh - a project that aims to help young men and women find their voice through writing.

2:47 (or ‘things you need to know’)

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 4 Comments

1.

The first time you are shown our family tree,
know that you are not made of roots. Know
that you are not a tree trunk held in place
by the memory of your ancestors. And even if at
times you feel their anger coursing through your
blood, know that we all have monsters in the
knots of our chromosomes,

but you, darling, are not defined by the demons
in your DNA.

2.

The first time you awaken to blushing sheets,
know that there is a battle wound between your
legs that will not scar for decades to come
and every twenty-eight days, you will be reminded of
everything you lost in this war you did not wage,

but my darling, know that you will always be my
brave little warrior and that I pray that you
find your peace before the blood dries up.

3.

The first time your heart takes up a task other
than pumping blood, know that it is normal to
melt at the mention of someone’s name, that it is
okay to want to stitch your skin to the one you love,
that falling can sometimes build instead of break you,
and even if you end up in pieces,

my darling, know that breathing love out into the air,
however selfishly, is never something to be regretted.

4.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
looking for words that have not yet been invented,
know that you got that from your mother,

and child, the only monster under your skin that
you will never be able to fight is poetry.

5.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
longing for pieces of yourself you left in notebooks,
know that writing is all about shedding your skin until
you are see-through,

and darling, I know being transparent hurts, I know how
much it aches to rip your skin apart and stick your veins
on paper for the world to see,

I know it wears you out. But I got it from my mother, too,
and darling, know that I wouldn’t know how to rid
you of it either.

6.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
know that it is my fault.

7.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
find a pen. Spill it out.

8.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am,
put yourself back together again and make me proud.

9.

The first time you find yourself breaking at 2:47 am
and I’ve already gone,

find me in your words.

Resuscitate me with your ink.

Know that I am sleeping on every page of every notebook
you own, and my darling,

even in my nonexistence, you are still my favorite poem.

You have to understand, even this isn’t enough.

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 1 Comment

We say it would never happen to us.

I had said it would never happen to me –
I had said it would never happen;
I had said someone like you would never
happen to someone like me,
so when you did,

I did not believe you.
When you did,
I did not understand the physics of you
being drawn to someone like me.

When you did, I fell and ever since I
fell for you,
I’ve been clumsy.

And you are all heart,
all sincerity,
and I am half myself and
half your lover

and let me tell you, let me swear
this to you: there is so much more of you
underneath my skin than there is contained
in yours

and I have never been so comfortable
having so much of myself outside of
me, but something about you says

it has all always belonged with you
anyways. And you, you are the opposite
of everything I grew up believing I was:

you are kind, and you are selfless,
and you are pure, and you are so,
so beautiful. And ever since you

happened, you have been making me
into someone worthy of revelling
in this.

Open Letter To Your Last Love

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 2 Comments

It is okay to be overwhelmed.

When love violently kicks in the door to
your chest and yells with a loaded
gun pointed in the direction of your
heart, it is okay to fall to the floor
and beg for mercy; to throw your pride
right out the window knowing fully well
that you will never see it again.

It is okay.

You won’t need it anymore.

When love intertwines its fingers with
yours, you will forget all you knew of
ego. You will embody humility. You will
forget all you knew of building walls
high enough to no longer see the stars
and take up gardening instead just to
grow beauty with your bare hands.

You will grow her fields of sunflowers
because she has taught you how to open up.

When love greets you for the first time,
you will know her. You will recognize
her smile. It is okay to be overwhelmed;
you are realizing you have found what you
have been searching for when you didn’t
even know you have spent twenty-one years
searching for it.

When love kicks in the door to your chest:
surrender.

Run to her.

Hold her close to you and promise
her you will never lock her out
again.

Things I can tell you now/I couldn’t tell you then.

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ Leave a comment

One. You taught my lungs how to inhale
joy instead of cynicism twenty-four hours
into knowing me. You are a type of oxygen I
quickly learned to breathe.

Two. When I told you I no longer believed
heartache was the only fuel for art, the
point I was actually trying to make was
that you made me want to write happy
poems for the first time in my life.

Three. The very first time you called me love,
you thawed centuries-worth of icicles
barricading the way into my chest and I melted
into an ocean of forever needing you.

Four. The first time I told you I loved you,
I was so overwhelmed by that epiphany that
all I could do was curl into myself  and sob
acceptance into my open palms.

Five. The first time you bore your skin to me,
I crawled inside your pores and turned your body
into my permanent home.

Six. The first time I had to leave, I converted
my heartbeats into instruments of time measurement
and counted the lub-dubs until I could fold myself
into your arms again.

Seven. Love, you have redefined leaving for me
so that it is no longer the thing I keep doing
uncontrollably with my feet, but the very thing
I keep begging you not to do whenever I am half-
asleep. Love, you have redefined holy for me so
that every time you raise your head in search for
god, I am finding him in the details of your face.
Love, you have redefined love for me so that it
no longer rhymes with loss and ache.

Lover, the first time you said hello, you turned my
heart into a fist-sized Sunflower and I knew then
that the only light that would make infinite flower
fields out of my chest is the ethereal glow you radiate.

Serendipity

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 3 Comments

1

You tell me you find god in the
way Sunflowers shift towards
the sun, but I find him in the
way my eyes and hands always
turn to you.

2

It took you twenty-three years to
finally find me and there are days
when I resent you for this.

I’m
sorry.

3

I do not recall any of the versions
of myself that existed before I first met
you.

I do not want to fill in the blanks
in my memory.

4

I have written love-letters to
every single hair on your head,
to every single skin cell on
your body. It is still not enough
to show you what I feel for you.

I know nothing ever will be.

5

In a world where eyes exist,
you say I shouldn’t even have
to speak. But there is so much
I want you to know that I don’t
trust my eyes to tell you.

I want you to know.
I want you to know just how
much of me you’ve healed.

6

You and I, we made religions
out of tasting one another.

(Lover, mercy me.)

7

I want to scream “I love you!”
at the top of my lungs from
each and every one of this
godforsaken city’s rooftops

but instead,
I am writing this
poem.