bells chime: you are

FADWA AHMED

When I am talking to other people, I forget that I keep secrets.

When your dad dies, you wear black for a year.

When I am tired and don’t have dark circles under my eyes, I draw them on.

In my dreams, I smoke cigarettes with rock bands and eat glass.

We hold our breaths until we feel sick: not for the lack of oxygen, but for the excess of carbon dioxide

(carbon in our carbon lungs in our carbon skeletons, cushioned with carbon

holding hands): my body’s work undoing my body’s work when I am underwater.

I don’t care for the beach, but I do love the ocean.

In a new house, I am cowering on clean carpets about the bird flu.

A parrot I knew used to dance and sing my nickname, but then he closed one of his eyes and never opened it again.

I’ll think about that when I’m 35.

I only read headlines because I think I understand enough.

My bones don’t hold me but they still do more for me than I ever did for them.

see: heavy with old blood and the shampoo I forget to rinse out of my hair

see: the backhanded c-sharp of my gold-plated harp

Your sentences are the same at every speed.

as in: What good is visuospatial intelligence if I do not let myself get lost.

as in: Everything I know about you, I know from guessing.

You teach me how to fall and clean all my lightbulbs.

We buy a lawnmower.

see: semblance of a shelving scheme

see: exactly the wrong amount of space between my skull and my brain

We live in a bouncing castle together and reinflate it every other night.

It’s not that I’m tired, per se.

My eyelids are too thing and my teeth are too thin.

The way the leaves sit on the trees is too many things to consider: It’s better with one less.

I go home twice a year to learn to live without the seasons.

I stop making lists and I stop taking notes.

(I’m not scared of anything except birds and asking.)