Poem by Saffah Ibrahimi
Art by Haley Cheng
She’s sitting across from me, making paper
planes out of old homework sheets. She tells
me to join her, delicate fingers pressing
against the ink of her last sociology final.
Did you know we make our first
impressions within one-tenth of a second?
Did you know I only needed half of that to
fall? I never speak the words out loud,
because that would make it real. I don’t
think I know how to love without tearing
myself apart. Mother, you’ve raised a
fool—a monster who thinks she’s worthy of
love, to be loved. My hands are big enough
to hold another woman’s but too small for a
tasbih, mother I’m sorry this is what became
of me. My greatest violence was loving a
woman, I close my eyes and pray for Allah
to look away, just for a moment. Please, you
should not see me like this, it is unbecoming.
She looks at me, smiling. There are shreds
of paper in her hair and smudged ink on her
fingers and this is when I learn how
beginnings are made. I don’t know how to
be gentle with myself, I pick the skin off my
lips and wait for the blood to seep into my
gums. I ignored the last girl I loved because
losing her seemed easier than mourning
myself. You see, I only know how to end
things. I skip to the end of movies and read the
last page of books because I don’t know
how to sit through the beginning. I told my
mother no when she asked if I still loved her
and I tell myself it’s because she no longer
knows who I am but in truth, leaving her
behind is easier than rebuilding what we
destroyed. Because I have learned that
beginnings are not made for people like
me—a rotting soul in a hollow
vessel—maybe I was left behind in the
debris. Maybe my ending was lost
somewhere in translation. Maybe this is why
I keep searching for it in potential friends
and lovers. She tells me to hurry up, she still
has another stack of papers to get through.
When we finish, let’s fly them off the roof,
she says with laughter in her eyes and ink
pressed into her thumbs. It’ll be the perfect
end to our day, she mutters—more to herself
than to me. I don’t respond to her, I don’t
think I know how to. I think I need to end
this—another love burned to the ground, lost
to the debris. I need to end this. I don’t know
how to.