By the edge of a ferry boat
I let go of my earthly tether.
Whatever wishes to enter the listless
Waters and satisfy their thirst
Must come with its rampageous longing.
I, an i of conundrum memories, tear
All of my mothers’ pictures from my heart.
The way a gunshot plunges silence into the thick
Skin of life. I forget all my lovers, the way the living, inevitably
Forgets the dead. Pour each of them names into the waters
Murderous form—that what lifelessness threatens beauty like this?
I swear by the power of Allah, no dust dares cover the shame
Of the waters, no language thick enough to crack a throat
Can save its people. I unfurl from my insecurities, toil
Away from my steep despair, there’s a yacht almost
Seven silence away from my boat, there is another
Seven loneliness deep in the ocean’s tide.
The fortune of a hook rests on the unfortunateness
Of the fish’s wide mouth— too curious to sought
What new flavor the bait holds, what water-god wants
A promenade before the waters wound?
I wish to slowly cover myself with the waters
The way whatever despair I swallow finds a way to heal me,
The way what failed at killing me, fails at making me suffer.
In my desperate longing for silence and struggle,
I bait. Myself. What river dares swallow the bait
And hides the corpse