DEATH Poem: The Dead Are Not Dead by Hajer Requiq

The last time I saw you
you were nine,
your eyes two burnt cities,
your face one giant tear.
Castile soap could not undo
the Marlboro stench
sticking to your lips.
Standing beside you was your mother,
her entire body a past tense,
her face a pile of wronged yesterdays.

“I’m sorry what happened to Si-Abdullatif.
He was a good man.”
I stammered the words out,
my mouth suddenly marked out
like a crime-scene.
I could feel Abdullatif’s pickaxe eyes
puncturing the wall opposite me,
the entire house a faded watercolour
against the complexion of his rage.
Your mother sewed you onto her body,
taut as a waistband,
her breath smelling of stale prayers
and sour incantations.
She knows it too well;
the searching mouth of shame
rumpling her life since a little girl.

At 16,
your mother watched Abdullatif climb up
the ruffles on her nightgown
and wring the pulp
out of her thighs.
No other woman would make him eat
for the next forty years
like your mother.
Now Abdullatif is a framed photograph
piercing the front wall,
his face pinned to your mother’s chest,
chewing on tears
and stolen Marlboro smokes.

Author: poetryfest

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