only unborn children can create this much suffering. dressed as lovers they invade my senses, making me nostalgic for that which i have conquered: empty desire and shallow lust. prey to inferior men, to the structures programmed into my bones, my wheat skin. myth of loneliness, destroy yourself. i betray my ancestors’ prescriptions unto my life, the light of a million indian women fueling my rebellion. slavery, forced sex, coerced marriage. a brothel fantasy played out, mongolian-style, at bengali weddings. how much money will be enough to win the bride behind the gilded door?

the promises i made in exchange for this body. i must break them now in order to keep them, to stay on course. dealings within the bounds of bloodlines, my lies of loyalty born of sly innocence. my need, sated outside the enclosure of marital duty, evokes their revenge: headaches and my flesh drained of fire. i leave my body when they strike; the pain dulling, tangible enough to evacuate the spirit.

the skin, peeled back, reveals muscle. the power of my body to diffuse and gather energies, to move and direct their flow, subjugates my environment. transforms it. sorcery of my birth, cunning of my arrival into this place, this time. all was desired and manifested according to my will. and to what new forces will i become mother during this visit? the center of each hand flickers with certain ability, invisibly building through my fingers.

© 2010 tahminah zaman

copper-lined veins
remembered fragments welded
coiled promises

death of before,
breath forgotten in waves
broken
divide unto themselves, double
helix tomorrow drawn
as fired chariot

© 2010 tahminah zaman

the freeway exit where my sister took her own life last year, park boulevard. i passed it feeling that maybe it didn’t happen. is my body, my soul, capable of such massive forgetting? she returns to me when i cross solano avenue in albany, a place we never walked together. a haze of rage and disbelief shields me from that indescribable death. the truth descends with the gravity of saturn and earth combined, a leaden, muddy burden. before i can realize that i have abandoned my body for a moment while i grieve, i am eating baba ganoush, the meal we shared most often. too much tahini, so much i can hardly taste the eggplant. lemonade speckled with pulverized mint leaves, their aroma purging the pain of remembering.

there is something inescapable about writing, unpredictable as to what words will write themselves next. like memory, a string unbroken by its very brokenness, the pieces of a shattered window, unified in their defiance of unity. the heart is bruised and bent in a rhythm of an ordered disorder, crumbs of past and future bleeding the present of its seeming certainty and wholeness. the body responds to signs cemented into the landscape: a brick wall, patch of grass, the coroner’s office, a stop sign emblazoned with letters of a secret alphabet. what remains is the movement between static elements, wind forcing apart the branches of a tree, buildings in ruin, fresh flowers thrust into a vase in the center of chaos.

© 2010 tahminah zaman

the curiosity of your lips–pink ambassadors to a mouthful of white capricorn teeth, beautifully square and even. your knees beneath my fingers, as if there were no denim between my fingertips and your skin. knowing those joints, the hardness of their bones, would fall victim to my touch. maybe i loved you, after all, for your helplessness against me.

i regret nothing, certainly not the lesson in futility. a hundred lifetimes spent hearing words that stabbed like knives, acid raining into my growing heart. that first saturday, your breath tasted of nothing more bitter than coffee, no pain had yet been delivered from between those white, even teeth. that, like so many other realities, came later.

eight weeks after i leave you, i sit alone in bed under a down blanket, hoping it doesn’t storm tonight. praying sky’s tears don’t drum against the roof. i don’t want another reminder of those nights, last december, when it rained hard for twenty days in a row, a painted wood ceiling above us, making love to the man who lied to me, who said he wanted to live his life by my side and father my children. who convinced me that distance and my own deficiency were the reasons i had never seen his family, his hometown, his true self.

the sky is black and clear, the night cold and the moon new. a light shines in a neighbor’s window; i am not the only insomniac grieving at midnight. it is tomorrow; the sun held back for another five hours, but morning here. keep the darkness still; let the sweetness of loss absorb completely, let those wasted lifetimes coagulate, echoes of a single utterance — one that could not be silenced. speech unable to resist the temptation, the glory, of sound.

© 2010 tahminah zaman

there was the one who loved me before him, who walked away only to return two years later to say she made a mistake, you should have been my children’s mother, now there’s no return from exile. clarity came too late, too much had changed. now a lover who lacks that fire, she said, raw passion. the flame that threatened control.

you left so many times i knew the scars would be stubborn to fading. now your silence, your quiet resignation to this bitter outcome, almost drowns away the sounds of your voice denigrating me, a bracelet i built for you hurled and exploding against our bedroom wall, its bloodstone jasper pieces lost in beige carpet. i gathered those bits together, put them in your jewelry box full of my creations, to remind you of your promise to string it back together. then i left the keys on your bar, pulled the door closed behind me.

one day will you remember this: that my love alone could never heal you, could not replace your fear of your father nor compare to your mother’s worship. will you call your error, your reluctance, your regret by name? or will you deny your heart’s logic completely? to whom, if anyone, will you speak those words? in my absence, only Ganesh and Kali remain, inert atop your bureau next to that broken bracelet in its carved wood box. and will you transfer your grief to their forms? or will you stay the same: hold everything within, wondering why you lie apart from the world outside?

© 2010 tahminah zaman

my travels have taken me to so many worlds, through eras i have forgotten. the temporary nature of everything, the permanence of pain, have scarred my soul beneath the surface of my skin. when you were taken from me i could no longer speak your name. robbed of my reflection, i carried the memory of losing you in my pocket. hundreds of years have passed and the terror of abandonment remains.

this time, a cellar wrapped in gray light becomes my private chamber. i sit alone remembering all the remnants of you; the gentleness of your gaze, percussion of your laughter, fullness of grinning lips, sweat the texture of silk soaking skin and cotton sheets, the grip of your arms around my body in sleep. the darkness within permeates the room, emptying itself from me. were you taken so that the next time we met, i would value you even more? god is a careful teacher, her lessons exploding illusions. life is not forever; only a few years or decades in which to express my love, my ecstasy, my gratitude at your return.

this time, stay. this time, grow old beside me over a whole lifetime: making love and eating together, laughing and grieving as one, moving with fingers entwined. this time, let me love you longer, i am a young woman, i have much to give. my devotion is as old as the earth, i have saved this sweetness for centuries, silent and incomplete. choose me.

© 2010 tahminah zaman

© 2010 tahminah zaman

© 2010 tahminah zaman

desire, her promises and traps. expectations move to frustration, not satisfaction. why does chaos arise from need, from longing? there is some being here, some persistent soul that tells me this chaos must be, rushing a natural state of being. probably an unborn child, forcing its will upon me, crowding out my existing plans. to enjoy this year, to savor every moment of the developing future, days packed with laughter and growth, slowing down to notice that all i want is here.

the craze stalls as these words are written. there will be long walks, and trees, clouds, rocks. there is much to learn about love, her endless forms, innumerable. much to observe, artworks of cooking and poetry to embark upon. debts of love forgiven, discovering the unchanging–again. s l o w n e s s — a forgotten art. food, lovemaking, marriage. all that tastes better unrushed. the tarot, secrets of the stars, ancient ways were lost to me before i exhumed them. slowness, too, i will know well. i will become.

“at times, going slow is how to move fast”

© 2010 tahminah zaman

of course, a lack of readiness. the last time around i was coerced into silence, into behaving within the chalk outlines of unforgiving rules. obedient. then, i returned toward the sign of sagittarius, overturning all i obeyed before. turning principles on their heads, watching the reversals of gravity and matter, documenting the movement from tradition to freedom. it is natural, to some extent, to fear that which we do not understand; easier to dismiss the unknown than to admit fear; simpler to explode in frustration than submit to humanness.

so many cycles of birth and death, rebirth, i’ve forgotten the knowledge i carry from before. the remembering is jarring, i find holes torn in my being from another time, another body i don’t recall. was my skin the same wheat brown, did my eagle’s eyes stare red into sun then? did my nails grow square into claws i was not allowed to use for self-defense, as i do now? hundreds of years spent learning a single lesson: the journey of self-discovery blooms from within. a thousand opened doors but he doesn’t enter. temple of desire, close your gates now.

within the stillness, between lessons, i sit alone. lost and gained, the principles and rules change. moving into the future, there is always a mark on that which is left behind. hurdles transcended, fading with each forward step. what kind of lover does a priestess, a sorceress, a magician take? the next destination, here. an instant suspended midair. no longer waiting but knowing.

© 2010 tahminah zaman