أبصار

Dust
occupies,
brown forearms
dominating
melanin and skin
it lays upon,
climbing up shriveled elbows,
particles of death cling to me when I reach
through cosmic sands
fragile mosaic seas.

I barely touch my roots

Nothing feels unusual,
fingers dig down when I am uncertain,
to blur my arms until I lose sight of them,
from beneath the rubbles, I resurrect a familiar red box.

A red box filled with letters
if read twice
these cardiac chambers could disintegrate.

Old birthday cards
Not coveting my eyes in titanium white
wearing a sickly yellow dress, instead

Photographs once brightly colored
now dressed in monochrome,
stale,
unmemorably loose.
I once saw hues
that murmured rage
but never danced with crimson

When gripped by doubt,
I touch my thorny roots,
sharp scales slice open my chest,
my lungs thrust against my rib cage,
bones stretching skin,
every piece of me grounded
every organ but two,
eyes, mine.Eyes sit comfortably round,
their unapologetic
weight on the top of my head,
pale irises,
heavy with doubt,
diluted with uncertainty,
amplifying to unsettle my orbits
who were a kind
welcoming home to disintegrating eyes

And just like any home,
they withered,
aged
dissolved
grew tired of tinted eyes,
their rigidity,
their minimal duality,
the perpetual rage they caged
fractured open

Running eyes,
my orbits dare not stop them

I never asked for this vision,
all I was brave enough to see was you
holding a bag dense with eyes,
struggling to empty it
in my flooding orbits,
extending beyond my vacant sight.

Approaching a chest wide open,
hollow orbits,
two open palms,
each bearing an eye.

I never asked for this vision.
He told me “try my cornea”
She told me “let your perception go,
take mine”

You pushed your eyes onto my face
my orbits made them fit,
until stories drooled across my cheeks

“These eyes are psychedelically in love with conversations amongst galaxies
spilling among the stars…”
“This pair is confused,
diluted in the heart…”

Eyes that look inward

Pierced eyes,
broken iris,
eyes hollowed,
starving,
you would never hear their shrieks

Eyes,
not all beautiful or illuminated
many broken,
bruised
hurt
some hardly able to greet a flicker
others eternally dark.

You kept on pouring eyes,
I did not understand,
could not tell you to stop,
I did not want you to stop

I saw through them all.

I saw how broken eyes rearrange heart strings
make it strum differently

I saw eyes that drowned with the ocean among secrets and salt
I saw through deceased eyes,
how lonely they felt.

Mauve clouds,
veiled you and me
feet submerged in wandering eyes,
palms and bag finally empty.

You told me before you left,
your curiosity when you kept your eyes with me

In your eyes rust cried to hear every verse,
but they never felt the poetic kiss.

—

Suggested citation:
Ali, A. K. 2019. “.أبصار” AGITATE! 1: http://agitatejournal.org/article/أبصار/.