TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART 1

PART 2

WEEKEND

PART 3

PART 4
PREFACE

No more drugs for my brain which just becomes levelled like chernobyl
& I’m clenching my eyes shut
against scenes of
the boy I love bathed in floodlight
at the zenith of all this violence we trudged through another joyless year
& piled trauma up into steps like my victim soul sculpted
into a staircase straight to heaven.

I saw you twice on the terrace and kept my visions to myself

of you glowing red & ascending
through a thick sky which was parted
like the legs of my shameless boy

I saw you sitting there & recalled the feeling of being called babygirl & then not being called at
all.

I swelled / I couldn’t fit inside your apartment / I had to get out / I had to be / someone else / I
had to unlearn empathy / I had to learn to be cruel / I had to practice on myself / right now I’m
on the precipice / of discovering my soul
in all my holy failings
my desire to repress my desire
how beautiful it was to be disgusting
to be scorned
to be obsessed with ugliness
& having something to fix
 my virgo sun
my needless guilt
I’m so thankful for the opportunity
to hate where I come from
I’ve demonized everyone that ever gave up on me
I’ve made reconciliation impossible
I’m a reminder of indecency
A post colonial nightmare
I only perform when I’m seeing your girl

I am dying to be told a truth any truth but specifically / the one where you feel how I
feel on the inside / but it’s hard to be consistent & it’s easy to depersonalize / you fire exit /
chainsaw / columbine wikipedia page / you theatrical release / of some sick human tragedy /
you gross misinterpretation / always the worst case scenario / & sometimes I have to put
myself in my own shoes just to recognize what I’m feeling / I can’t explain how it happens
outside of myself / except to say that I know my lifestyle is repulsive / and if I could live a more
holy life don’t you think that I would?
PART 1

your voice came in like bells cutting cleanly through that night,
on that rooftop with the sage clenched between your three good fingers
& mortal kombat coming thru the open window
pinned against the pink n
screamin in the streets with just a backpack full of twenties
& baba’s 2000 Accord some girl on the precipice of herself
some girl alive like a virus - not wholly but with room for debate

so nirvana becomes the only corner stone in town selling altoids

so you offered them to strangers to make room for kush
so I’m building up a case for Jay Electronica in your kitchen
so if it gives you a headache that’s what the joints are for
so if I kiss the boy who rolled them
don’t think I give my love away just to spite you cause
I don’t give love away just to fit in.

I give away my journals habibti, I see art through a golden lens & I find myself on the other
side of everything. n you see art like narcissus boring into the pool
some bitch on the precipice of herself,
so we’re always punished for knowing our worth.
so I won’t fucking stand for that anymore.
so I saw the love notes I left you jammed between some CD cases and the CD I made
you has never left your car & I’m so thankful, regardless, for love in all of its brazen glory. &
through that I’ve found heaven stacked in layers on top of itself, much like the ones I adore.
PART 2

So I thought spring came in soft with the lambing but this year they decided to remain unborn.
& If I thought I could tell the future, I see now that everyday is an edge that we pressure
others to push us off of. We wanna divest ourselves of responsibility for the solemn deaths of
our character. Like it was tragic, n unsettling, like an accident you read about on your timeline.
& So if heaven is stacked on top of itself & everyday I am pushing off an edge, am I falling
further from God’s pink light or closer 2 my own internal melt? Where the trauma can be
remolded into something productive. Yes, there is a way 2 read trauma as productive. Art is
mostly the commodification of anguish n the artists who live among us are the ones askin for
help. The language of artists is coded with bodies n society jerks off while criticizing the pain.
Yes every death is political don’t let anyone ever tell you differently. Yes everything is about
order & we’ve constructed nothing good.

So I stay linked to him I text him every day I find new ways to intake and compress what he
tells me. He was trailing after me laughing about the unlikeliness of two people existing at all
and somehow still inevitable. I come & drift into him & kill him like the factories on the west
end, & ride the bus for hours a day just to avoid telling him how I feel, & what I’ve learned
from love is that two people can starve each other & then brush it off like it’s nothing. But I’m
tired of letting other people eat off my plate. N when I push him off the edge he holds solid, &
for this reason I know he cannot love me.

So he comes in with stacks that leave blue ink on my fingers. So I see light in him when he’s
swingin that angel sword but ultimately, begging him to slice through a pain he does not feel
is useless. I thought everythin would be fixed if I slept with a boy with both his ears pierced.
That’s not how it works tho and that’s fine too I guess. I just don’t want to see anymore
murders on the street I grew up on. I don’t want to see anymore swastikas. I want tolerance.
I’m not asking for a lot. Just the absence of brutality. I don’t want to die for anything. I should
not have to die for anything.
WEEKEND

you grew out your hair & I’m still raging with love
always so ignorant &
trying to feel an old feeling

of course I still want you the most -

but you have a lot to say for someone
who never had to live here.
PART 3

Tariq sweats all over me, clammy hands & overheated

from too many hours ballin on the streets alone,
but I love the boy & that’s enough,
I know he’ll be useful someday to someone
although it probably won’t be me

Mississauga love comes in through the window like

block party dancehall the smell of vietnamese barbeque
& ducking behind a 7/11 to avoid seeing his mother
how we hid each other
how he hides inside of me still

how he meets me at the ball court & teaches me to drive in a parking lot
how I almost crashed his car and he didn’t yell at me even once
so of course it’s Real Luv so of course he’s nothing like my father
& I’m dizzy with trust, wallah it’s so Real,
my venus in starlight and my taurus moon weeping
for something stable to cling to for a boy who brings tha water
I want Tariq to sit still for once
I want him in his construction boots all day
soft & grateful for me & blasting
Gucci Mane in the library parking lot

I’m a yellow sweater

I’m a rusted drain pipe in a demolition neighborhood
the American dream is the benz he took on debt to pick me up in
& that’s not our ends but it’s where we take our cues from

people think money comes and goes but second gen immigrants know that it
mostly just goes
toronto girls in juicy sweat suits with student loans
my baby with six pairs of kobes &
refilling the same cup all week at mcdonalds
money comes and goes and goes
& there’s not much we can do but let it
PART 4

when I was born our family got robbed twice. my dad walked around the house strapped for a
week before we moved & that was the last time I lived in Pakistan.
sometimes men do protect you some men spend their entire lives trying to save you without
knowing its too late, some trauma never goes away, some trauma lives in your own home.
what I needed more than anything was empathy & unconditional love, and I couldn’t have that
so I abstained from the rest of it. my whole youth on strike. womanhood has been
obliterated by heaven / childhood violence was going to the masjid to hear about how I’m the
only one going to hell. but I know god loves me. you don’t just burn your creations. you don’t
create children n leave them stranded with no staircase.

I spent my whole life reaching for control like that / Security / if god is testing all of us then
mine is one of rehabilitation. I was born unstable, with a wounded brain n ripping apart razors
in middle school / the first edge I almost fell off was the balcony from my childhood room &
now an entire adulthood where I’ve been exposed / trying to explain what it’s like to smoke
backwoods to avoid zoloft, like that’s somehow supposed to be better. & I’ve never taken birth
control because I was raised to never do something so reckless to my body. No I would never
let anyone inside me. No if I died it would have been the ultimate testament to baby girls bein
born helpless & owned. but there are other ways to take back your body. some girls destroy
themselves I tried that but it’s most satisfying making everyone uncomfortable with honesty
on what is was to be helpless, born destroyed.
& that’s fine, it’s great it’s good it worked for a while but that’s not what we’re aiming for
anymore. I want tolerance. I’m not asking for a lot. Just the absence of brutality. N this year
no men get to be our gods. No men get to marry us off no one gets to pass down our
ownership thru the banquet halls or the courts. Nah this time we get to get off easy. I wanna
get off easy. No more bad brains no more hard times no more fixing the pain into something
presentable. No more consumption or criticism. No more eating baby girls alive. You don’t get
to live inside us. I got boys who get tender like they’ve felt what I’ve felt. Got boys raised by
single mothers got boys with septum piercings got boys who read the news & feel us & see us
for what we are and I love you. I know. & maybe you do protect me. & maybe I don’t even
need you to.

but it’s time for you to recognize

all I ever did
just to feed you.