Life without rain

Parchment.
When I prostitute my fears like this
I take my payment for the raised hair
on the back of your arched neck,
for the rippling chicken skin,
for the way you look longer through the window

at the unstained sky,
in the dreamless repose
of the serial
rapist.

When I slake my thirst for recognition

I cannot see diversity.
We women are all one.
You are me and I am you,

Plucked,
naked,
torn and bruised.

When I talk of things that tear the belly

from the pig of existence
I plant the echo in the corner
of another woman’s mind

and clone the pain, the fright,

the bane, the doubt,
the yellow stench of inability.

Better parched, an arid mute,
Better break my typing fingers in the vice

clamped to the basement bench,
Better sew up my mouth with poultry twine,

swamp my dreams some other way,
and stop this clawing
at the ground.

Life without rain was first published in Some Other Damn Rainbow -Unsanctioned Writing of the Middle East, ed. Hind Shoufani (Beirut) 2012