Notebook Fragments

Jess Rizkallah wrote this after rereading Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds. 

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Copy Of 9.9 Notebook Fragments
Jess Rizkallah

you know, i’m scared of everything but you can’t tell b/c i never!!! joke about it on the internet

new rule: if you don’t write a luv poem abt it then it doesn’t exist & it’s probably just gas

i am always searching for the moon. maybe instead of blood, i am full of moths.

أنت القمر في حياتي

TO DO:

• fafsa / financial aid
• apartment search
• send transcript
• send immunization records
• call teta(s) more
• drink water
• clean yr room bitch

summer solstice - when the sun yawns for a long time but its breath smells good
summer solstice - when fireflies hatch from the empty wombs of bullet cases

everything is softer unfolding from the tree trunk dusk
of the throat / i wonder how many times arabic has had
to let a lover down easy

look at all the rooms i am
                                       look at all the windows
opening and closing
                                       wind and wind and wind

                                                                    last night i had tears in my eyes about my jido afif
                                                                    but for the first time in months they were because
                                                                    of laughter
jido wrote ghazals & still lives
in the meter of them
somewhere on the wind          & wind          & wind
          & i don’t agree that
non brown folks approaching
ghazals is an appropriation.
i’m told by other brown folks that
this is what i should
believe,   but i don’t.
i want everyone to be so honest about their love. about their longing, to face it where it lives
                                                                                         in the space between loss          & the sun
                                                                                         sometimes this is the only place love can live.
                                                                                         i don’t know if this makes me complicit with
                                                                                         the colonizers          i don’t know if i care
                                                        this is my privilege
one day i will write a ghazal
when it stops feeling like
a windtunnel my love can’t
write itself out of.

الزهور تتفتح على لسانك

*    out of the corner of my eye, my arm keeps
tricking me into thinking it’s on fire.

i think it’s because of my new eyeliner but lately i always
feel like my eyes were just crying even when i haven’t
                                                                                                 been crying

                                                  the last few people i cried about will never know it.
                                                  will never suspect. this makes me feel sneaky
                                                  this makes me feel clever. this makes me feel sad.
                                                  this makes me feel better than the alternative would.
the alternative: my heart is two paper cranes
i go to hand you one of them            you smile
but do not extend your hand

the alternative: you do not water my plants when i am gone

the alternative: all the windows    closed

the alternative:                                                                                                                       وفاة اسمي في فمك

-  -  -  -  new rule: there should only be one month of summer & winter
  the rest should be fall & spring. i could never live on the west coast or 
any coast that keeps reminding my body that it’s a body                         
        & not an oak tree                                         birch tree                            cedar        

dear massachusetts dept. of revenue: why is ur office in new york
please do not arrest me over 47 dollars. your money is on its way

                                                      abdelhalim taught me that “tobah” means never again
                                                      never again will i love you (that’s not guaranteed)
                                                      never again will i call your name into the night (i never did that)

instead i sing like grackles do under the high notes of bulbuls
i ride the coattails of their stories         at dusk when the fireflies
distract from my ankles & no one watches that closely anyway
is there anything scarier than that             to finally stop
to take a breath         to find yourself alone    
a room with no wind              forgive me
                                                     for navel-gazing i just /
                                                                                                want you /
                                                                                                                    to know /
                                                                                                                                       that i love you

              so i keep singing. so i just keep singing.