Everything Here...in the voice of Tara Fares

Ghorba ghosts 

prepared by R22 April Guest Editor Massoud Hayyoun

Delirious, I am laid to rest in the clavicle of a bird

whose remaining body is a ghost. In the next life,

death has the sense not to creep around me, breathe

my air. Bright, bright this new world

and ugly. To have been taught nothing remains of my body

and still, my limbs. What to make of no one watching?

No rush, nothing to return to by a mildewed grief.

Here, there is space. There is space and nothing will fill it.

Some days, I dream no one is watching. I dream I am small,
standing beneath the rim of a greying sky. My supine body
a willow leaf carried in the quivering wind. All I wanted was to be left
alone, to drive a beautiful car, to veer to the edge
and quiver against a beloved’s body

Some days, I dream no one is watching. I dream I am small,

standing beneath the rim of a greying sky. My supine body

a willow leaf carried in the quivering wind. All I wanted was to be left

alone, to drive a beautiful car, to veer to the edge

and quiver against a beloved’s body. Instead, I am rosined

into the earth, brittle as bone. Someone’s look

what happens when you…Look what happens!

How many have died in my name an inherited death.

I touch their rosined bodies now, their old loves

the amber that fills them. There is everything here

and no one is watching.