Category: Prose

John by 7ala Abdullah

~ 7ala Abdullah ~ 1 Comment

(In order to understand this piece, you should first read this explanation and this prelude.)

She was a magnet, and the whole world was made of metal.

So, him standing there in front of her was simple physics. As were the items of clothing hitting the floor, but he doesn’t even know that they are. He’s so hypnotized by the grey in her eyes that he can only tell she’s moved when her fingers begin to tickle his shoulder. Goosebumps like mountains dress his limbs in pure desire. He wants to drop to the floor and beg for forgiveness for things he never felt apologetic about. He wants to cry rivers of repentance; he wants to confess all his wrongdoings. He wants to declare his undying belief in her holiness.

A cold breeze enters through the cracks in his windows and hisses softly onto his back, but he’s too fixated on her to notice the change in temperature. She glows in this kind of darkness, he thinks. No, she glows all the time, he decides, but fabric interferes. Her pupils are microscopes picking apart and harshly inspecting every inch of his mundane skin. He stands erect, unable to move without superior command.

He doesn’t know enough, but he knows that when her tongue meets her lips; she tastes Eden. He doesn’t know enough, but he knows that when she arches her back; the heavens balance themselves on the curve of her spine, and he knows that when she curls her toes; angels kiss her feet. He doesn’t know enough, but he knows that the most expensive silk sheets will never compare to the softness of her skin, and that the sound of her voice is comparable only to the most moving musical notes. But he doesn’t know enough.

Even after all those months, he doesn’t know enough.

He’s spent a hundred and thirty-three days watching her, and he still doesn’t know enough. He knows her favorite brand of milk (Flora), her preferred type of cheese (Gouda), her favorite chocolate bar (Snickers), her favorite place to shop (Gucci), her favorite perfume (Armani Code), and her bra size (32 D). He knows she has five clients a week and that she spends her weekends in bed. He knows she has no family. He knows her favorite color is red and her nails never stay unpainted in a bloody shade for too long. He knows she’s got a standing order of ten garter belts and fishnets from La Perla per month. He knows she gets more and more friendly with the delivery man each time and he knows she’d pleased him pro-bono in September then kicked him out at three in the morning because he snored.

But he doesn’t snore. And if he did, he’d happily cut off his own nose so as to not displease her. Matter of fact, he’d brought a knife just in case.

But right now, her velvet hands are whispering profanities into the contours of his largest organ. Like an earthquake; her touch rattles him from the inside out and he’s shuddering with the realization that he’s finally where he knows he’s been heading his whole existence.

Here, the pieces of the puzzle called his life are falling into place. Here, the windows of hope are allowing him a peak into paradise. Herein lies the answer to every question he’s ever asked himself in the twenty-four years he’s walked this sorry Earth.

Her. This. Here. Now. Please.

Please, he finds himself saying. Take me, just take me. And he’s on his back, eyes full of tears and hands and feet immobilized. She places her ruby lips on his and he breathes immortality for the first time. Her tongue tastes of sin, and he’d gladly burn in hell for eternity for just another taste.

Now it’s just them and the moon that serves as the only cover to his cloth-forsaken body. She’s taunting him with miscalculated touches and misguiding glances. She’s mocking him with irregular patterns of kissing. Her hands are on his neck and he finds himself throwing his head back in submission.

You’re mine, she sings and his abundant hair looks up towards the heavens to declare it as the truth.

All yours, he pleads, and she presses harder against his neck in approval.

She’s looking down at him and he feels so small – so imperfect; so petty and human, so damn inglorious. He’s swallowed by the greedy lips of her lust and his life is flashing before his eyes.

He swears he can almost see divinity emanating from every pore in her body.

He’s out of breath, but she’d sucked it out of him the first time he saw her, so it was nothing new.

A little tighter around the neck and he’s giving in. A little tighter and he’s fading.

He doesn’t know enough, but he knows that she believes she is a Goddess; and so she is.

He doesn’t know enough so he doesn’t know where he’s going.

But he knows he’s leaving with a smile on his face.

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.