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.

Puppet

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 11 Comments

Remember the day you opened your hand to find the entire universe standing on the tips of your fingers?

Remember how you swore you’d never let anyone take that feeling away from you?

Where did you go?

You say; it’s gone, the planets and their rings and their stars have all vanished.

And the moons?

You say; they’re all stuck in new moons these days. Too tired to shift to waxing crescents; there’s no light for them to feed off.

But they’re not the only ones that have lost their shine.

The light in your eyes has been dimmed from blinding to nul and you’ve been living in the dark since the sun set inside your pupils. You’ve been storming cloudy weather, but it’s always just cloudy; never rainy. That suffocating humidity that leaves you reeling for breath but never comes down as rain to finally get you out of your misery.

Put your hand on your heart. Press hard.

This is how you know the walls you’ve built over it were too thick. You can’t feel it beating – you can barely feel it pumping blood into your veins; and you’re turning blue at the tips to go with the blue in your soul.

I say “love”, and you hold your head over the toilet with a finger down your throat trying to forget how it tastes.

“Love”. You’re face down on the floor with a needle in your hand trying to push it out of the thick walls of your vessels.

“Love”. You’re drowning yourself in a glass of whiskey trying – just trying – to wash the memories off the walls inside your head.

But you’re failing and you can’t forgive yourself for it. The more you run, the more you order your brain to erase all the images of those times you felt like royalty; the more you hurt.

You’re vanishing along with your stars.

The mere mention of the word emotion has you running to the other side of the world like it’s a gun whose poisonous bullets you’re trying desperately to avoid. Can’t you see that they’re the same bullets that used to shoot out of you not so long ago – the same ones that brought life to the death around you many times before?

You’re wasted. You say your good intentions have all been shot to hell.

Can’t you see it’s the same hell you’re choosing to live in?

But you’re blind to all logic.

Do you remember? Do you remember when you opened your palms and you found fingers – just lines and creases – where heaven used to stand?

Remember that Earth-shattering realization that you let it all slip away?

You say; I tried to hold on with all my might.

But it’s all gone and I can’t seem to get it back.

Are you trying?

You don’t hear me.

It’s just that one word echoing inside your skull.

“Love”;

You’re pulling at the strings that keep you standing because love is a play and you’re done being dragged around by hands that aren’t your own. All you want is the final act – the one where you fall to the ground and kiss the scissors that cut you up.

All you want is to sit here. Motionless.

All you want is to sit and reminisce.

All you want is your heaven.

And if you can’t have it you’d rather not exist.

Hunger

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 8 Comments

We were starving, but not for food. Never for food.

We hungered for experience;
for that addictive rush of adrenaline that fulfilled our need for everything extraordinary.
That temporary shock of restlessness
and unfathomable mess it brought with it.
That goosebump-inducing desire to touch the sky;
the one that disregarded the pain of the fall that was inevitably bound to follow.

We were thirsty, but not for water. Never for water.

We felt our throats dry up to match the desert ground
and we longed for the rain.
For the day it would wash away
the grains of sand that disrupted our growth;
those tiny pebbles of empty-mindedness that stood firm on the feet of our foundation and disabled our movements.
For the day that heavenly water
would pull up colors from our roots and out-shine their blinding black.

We couldn’t breathe, but we didn’t need air.

Our lungs longed for genuine emotion instead.
They longed to finally feel
a beating in their ribbed cages.
To find a reason for that beat
and to hold on to that one passion
that kept a steady rhythm pumping through our blood.
To find a substitute for the oxygen our world is killing
and replace it with something
from within ourselves;
something that would keep us going without inhaling.

No one knows us like we do.

Our desires have no place in their books and their religions. We were not fashioned from the same cloth; our eyes are not like their eyes. They don’t see what we see.

But one day we’re gonna shine a light so bright; that thick layer of hate cloaking their pupils will disappear.

And when we soar, they will have no other choice but to bask in the happiness that we will radiate.

Gun

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 2 Comments

I understand where you’re coming from.

I get it, believe me. I know it’s not black and white, I know you’re coming from a shade of grey I still haven’t familiarized myself with. And you should know that greyness of yours is burning into my skin and turning me blue with discontent.

I get it. Believe me.

I’m all for open-mindedness. I know you think your gun isn’t loaded. I know it goes off only at times when your mind is asleep and your hands are thinking on their own. I know you just don’t think it through, but the bullet has already lodged itself into my chest.

But I’m keeping an open mind.

So when the blood cries itself out of me, I’m only trying to look into your eyes that you’ve kept shut. I don’t want the reasons, I just want the apology. I don’t want your please, I just want your I’m sorry. I want your sincere I’m so sorry, please forgive me because only that can breathe the life back into me.

Just give me the fucking gun. I’ll put it back on your dresser. Again. There’s no point in unloading it, you’ll only reload it the moment I turn my back to leave that infamous trail of blood on the carpet of your bedroom.

I know you never meant for it to go off.

But how many times can you shoot me down before I can no longer stand up?

The World by 7ala Abdullah

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 2 Comments

Look.

Don’t leave an inch unpondered.

Stare at it all; stare at your bumps and bruises. Stare at your flaws and imperfections; your scars and your voids. Stare at your worn-out hands; those hands you used to build and break – to hold and to push. Look at your cuts, look at how they bleed bright blue with indifference – and your back; all straight and proud and defying humanity.

Look at yourself, look at where the world filled syringes of poisonous hate and injected them into your skin. Look at your body; covered in needle-marks from where apathy, distrust, and jealousy were forced into your blood.

Here you stand; remnants of yourself.

You typical human, you peaked at 6 years old and ever since then, your life’s gone downhill. You were then taught that love has a name. You were told that there’s right and there’s wrong and there’s us and there’s them. You were taught about shame and you hid in dark corners to protect yourself from it.

You were fed war and racism; you drank religion and you spat out the parts of it you disliked. You were told it made you better; so you believed it and you looked down upon anything that was different. Anything that brought along any kind of change with it.

You never learned self-satisfaction; instead you were taught how to rob others of it. You suffered and cried for an award only you can give yourself. You wept when you faced the mirror; the possibility that you might have been beautiful was seemingly galaxies away.

You were like a gluttonous Eve with an appetite for apples; you picked the ripest ones despite the forewarnings you received. And they were delicious and fulfilling, but you fell from your heaven into pain each time.

And the thing about pain is that it falls hard on us like rain in a storm, covers us in damages for as long as it can and eventually; it dries off and we’re left with the aftermath. For you, the damage was to your soul; your spirit. You were killed by your own kind, told you’d never amount to anything – told that you were less of a human because of a chromosome and told you were more of a chosen one because of a belief.

You died a little every time you were robbed a human right in the name of holiness.

How did you get here? How did you end up this way?

Pain is no longer your biggest problem. Your biggest problem is that you’ve learned to enjoy the solace and the beauty of the pain thrust upon you. You no longer try to extirpate it from under your skin.

But get yourself off the ground. Let go of the hurt. Find satisfaction from within yourself. Make a change.

Eve by 7ala Abdullah

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 10 Comments

(In order to understand this piece, you should first read this explanation. Otherwise it’d be hard to comprehend the meaning behind it. )

Darkness used to terrify me; now I’m drawn to it like a shark to fresh blood.

The petrifying serenity of it calms me. I’ll never be able to articulately describe the moment I first felt joy at the absence of light – the moment I felt the fear climbing up to the surface of my skin. It shot out like the screams of a woman in labor, only to give birth to the quiet fearlessness that was budding out and taking its place from within me. I cradled it against my chest and fed it my own skin; stayed up long nights to keep it calm and content. I watched it grow out of its bibs and pacifiers and into tall glasses and cheap shots. I watched it grow out of its onesies and slip into skin-tight dresses and expensive garters.

The unforeseen. The inexplicable. The extraordinary. The inhuman; the way-too-human. I loved it so. I loved its unpredictability. I loved the Godly power it brought with it; I loved the tender feel of the life beneath my fingers. I adored the fleeting sense of ecstasy, I adored the control; the shamelessness. I cherished those sleepless nights and the mess I was almost always left to clean alone.

I fell in love with the solidarity, the independence. The nonchalance.

I never cared about anything or anyone else. I never needed anything else to keep me sane. And I know what they all think of me; I know they think I’m a slut with legs so far apart; the sun never sees both at the same time. Well, that’s for me to know and for them to pretend they do with their empty heads held high above their shoulders. They look at me, eyes full of judgment and pity. They search for answers in my eyes, look for solutions in their tiny minds. They think they’ve got me all figured out;

“Oh, that poor little girl with no one to save her.”

But there’s always a little more to everyone than people would first presume.

There’s a lot more to me than he thinks.

He with his eyes full of fire and his hands full of recklessness. He with his silencing lips and hungry fingers. They sear into my skin and leave traces of the sin I’ve gladly called my life sentence. He calls me beautiful – he says so without looking at my face. His greedy tongue looks for comfort in the salt of my body, my limbs are his lullaby – my body; his prize. But is a prize really a prize when you’re paying to get it? His thinking never really reaches that far. I’ve always been thankful for the disgustingly limited thinking process of men.

It’s served me well.

Darkness.

I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than the sight of his bare body being hugged by moonlight. His features melting away with the furniture; the only things sharp and vivid are his eyes. His dilated pupils are glowing with sincerity, yet his intentions are anything but sincere. He stares at me full of want. His hands and feet are cuffed to the bedposts – he smiles wickedly; makes sure to let me know he approves.

Darkness.

It used to mortify me. I’d always look for ways to make it go; I’d always find a light to scare it away with. I’d always figure out a way to make it slither away from my body like a snake and leave me unpoisoned.

But oh, how I cherish its venom now. It swims through my veins and takes over my blood; runs through my lungs and leaves me gasping.

Darkness.

The kind from within. The kind unaffected by the sun. The kind that blots out all logic and leaves me free as an eagle.

It’s beautifully dangerous, this kind of desire. It’s endless, unsatisfied; always wanting, never settling. It’s greedy and stubborn, it’s illogical and it leaves no room for negotiation.

Darkness.

We’re in the drowning darkness. His breath is singing along with the wind, his body counting on my mercy. My hands find their way to his trachea. He’s excited, tilts his neck towards me; gives it away like toys to a child. The familiar tenderness thrills me.

“You’re mine.” I hiss into his ear. I feel the hairs all over his body responding to the friction of my lips.

“All yours.”

He has no idea. He’s bound to me for the rest of his sorry life. He doesn’t know he’s going to spend it all under my perfect body trying to grab onto my flawless skin.

I give a tantalizing squeeze to his neck. “Oh, God”, he whispers. I’ve been dubbed God before, but its truth only strikes me in the split second it takes for their faces to change from red to blue. The moment their demanding eyes change from lustful to terrified. The moment I know they know I’m the one in control. The moment they realize they’ve handed their lives to me without thinking twice.

The moment he realizes I’ve got his last breath in the palm of my hand.

17 seconds is all it takes. His tainted light creeps out of his wasted body and leaks into my superior soul. I hang on to his neck for a little more than that. The state I’m in can only be described as euphoric – his limp body is the cloud I choose to rest on.

I touch his lifeless face. Despite the struggle he just put on, it looks calm – expressionless.

He’s given in to his fate – the one I set for him.

Any whore with ovaries could give a life.

It takes a Goddess to take one away.

Holy is in the eye of the beholder.

© Copyright 7ala Abdullah