(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

It’s times like these when I need you the most.

It’s moments like this when I’m suffocating in the pitch-black darkness and I need your comforting arms to hold me, your soothing voice to calm my nerves… when I feel like every single cell in my body is breaking and the ever-viscous sadness is creeping out of my every tiny little pore.

My tears are pain-drenched, rushing angrily onto the pillow like the blood of a martyr. They seep into the fabric quickly to make room for the ones bound to follow. They don’t move fast enough, and soon I find myself drowning. I’m finding it hard to breathe; it’s not an easy task with this heaviness sitting in my chest. It feels like my lungs are about to collapse and I’m face-down in this pillow that reeks of sorrow.

I need you to hold my hand. Why don’t you hold my hand one last time before you leave? I need you to look me in the eyes and assure me with your smile that my world isn’t about to crumble beneath my shaky feet. Please. Please don’t lie to me and tell me that the damage is reparable. Don’t tell me that I can go on without you because I can’t.

You once said that sometimes the ending leaves you with a lot of missing pieces, but you find out later that you can live without them. Well, this isn’t one of those endings because the moment you left me, you took everything with you. You are the oxygen my organs are failing without. You are the one for whom these beats in my chest were fashioned, you are the boiling tears flowing out of these deprived eyes.

So you climb into bed with me because you find it in your heart to take mercy on me. I don’t mind being pitied, pride is something I have with people other than you. I’m watching your silhouette slip under the covers on your side of this king-size and I roll myself towards you.

“I hate you for leaving.” I whisper into your ear.

“You could never hate me.” You reply. And you’re right.

I cry quietly onto your chest. Your fingers are tracing lines across my back and it puts me to sleep like a lullaby does to a child. You’re the only one who knows how to kill my insomnia, it fears you like a deer fears a lion. It runs the other way when faced by you, and my eyelids meet one another like long-estranged lovers. You whisper I-love-yous into my ears all night long. Your voice echoes into my dreams that are already full of you.

And I’m dreaming again of how you left. I dream of the hospital, of the blood, I dream of your body lying under all that white. I dream of the doctors, of your mother, of that moment my heart stopped beating because it was just so in sync with yours. I dream of it and pretend it’s just a dream. I dream and try to forget that it’s my reality. I dream of the way you left me, I dream of yesterday.

And I wake up because you’ve gone again, and I’m still here. And even though you’ve left, I’m still haunted by your presence. And even though you’re six feet under, I’m the one who’s really dead.

 

© Copyright 7ala Abdullah

We awaken each morning to a clean slate.

Every step we take either blots it or purifies it further. But it doesn’t matter; it never matters. When we close our eyes at the end of the day, it all fades away. We wake up again to a blinding whiteness. New day, new choices. New life. But some things aren’t so easy to erase. Some things stick with us day in and day out. Some things can’t be fixed by the simple act of closing our eyes. Some things are permenant – or at least more long-lasting than others. Some things leave a huge disgusting stain on our lives that we are powerless to clean.

I try to shrug you off but you’ve never left my shoulders. I’ve never been alone, but there’s a certain death that comes along with being left behind. I’m left in this godless place and you’re no where to be found.

You used to be so caged and I used to be so free and now I feel like irony’s having a laugh at our expense. You’re finding out how it feels like to have wings and I’m finding out how it feels to have my wings cut off. You’ve set out on this new adventure; all excitement and spontaneity, and I seem to have made a home of this painful rut I’ve found myself stuck in.

Would you save some room for me in case I get to fly again? Because like the tide to the moon, I’ll always be drawn to you. You’ve shined down on me in the darkest hours and now I’m left in the black come sunset.

Would you have stayed, had I asked?

Should I have asked?

It feels like this is where it all stops. When I open my eyes every morning, your beautiful face sits stubbornly on my canvas. I long for the days when it used to be all white, all clean.

All-new.

But I still long for you. And maybe this isn’t an end.

 

© Copyright 7ala Abdullah

It’s all about getting used to change.

Being strong enough to stay unaffected by it if it’s bad, being wise enough to be thankful for it if it’s good. Being indifferent if you realize it doesn’t affect you in any way.

But I was never strong, wise, or indifferent. I have a weak heart, a vulnerable mind, and I dwell on the littlest of details; hence proving that I could never be indifferent. Change has always caused mind-quakes in my head – and instead of buildings and houses breaking down it was always I that fell to the ground. I shook and shivered and clutched to familiarity till it cut me off from our umbilical chord and I was left there to fend for my own self. I always felt betrayed by the old and invaded by the new. I refused to believe that anything else would compare to what I had back in my beloved comfort zone. I cried and scratched and held on with all my might until all I was left with was my scars and bruises in all-new territory. I gave up on coping before I even started trying to. I longed for the past and ignored the blessings of the change that the present brought me.

Then you came like a beautiful storm of devastating unfamiliarity and robbed me of all I’d come to know. At the time, I didn’t see all that had changed because your light had blinded me to everything else around me. I was too lost in you to realize that I was just lost. Too focused on you to realize that everything around me was disappearing.

And then you, too, disappeared.

And everything I’d gotten used to and depended on to survive was gone in a second. You turned my whole life upside down and just left me there to put the pieces back together.  And I laid there helplessly with something that felt very much like pride holding me down. I convinced myself that it’ll all come back. I told myself that everything will change back if I just lay here and wait.

Stillness took over and I still refused to move. Ironically, what had changed around me had started to settle and I was the one who was starting to change inside.

And here I am after what felt like endless decades of resistance. A changed woman; I now disacknowledge predictability. I’ve molded myself into a different species of being, one that is indifferent to its surroundings. I’ve made myself into a warrior whose past is her greatest enemy. I’ve taught myself that it is the only way to survive. Come what way, I’ve turned into someone who can weather all storms without doubt or regret. In this ever-changing world, sticking with the old and known only meant that you’d get stomped on by everyone running towards the new and undiscovered. And I’d been stomped too many times to allow it to happen again.

It’s not that I’d gotten used to change. It’s that I found a way to remain oblivious to it. I’ve built a tiny little box around myself that shielded me from all things human and worldly. Things like emotions, feelings, hardships, problems, truth, lies, and what-not.

It’s working for me so far.

I’ve learned how to be content with being alone.

I’ve learned how to be strong, wise, and indifferent.

I’ve learned how it feels to be unaffected by change.

But all it takes is a little whiff of your perfume for the nostalgia to creep under my skin and undo all the work I’ve done.

© Copyright 7ala Abdullah