Ghada Khalil

the windows plucked, architecture tucks you in
with your golden eggs – your ovaries staring
at your freezer like it is not form The Milky Way.
they steal them from you after you show them off on
your mini-strawberry-me-too channel.

that’s me in the corner, propped for reality
that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spot
where people kiss. love-make, build apartments
and live in them.
that’s me in the mirror when you are not there
every waking hour of a hurt lost and blinded fool
feels like this, extras are whispers and kisses.

consider this, to tie my cut hair to a canoe
on a drifting gliding river
take it to where it won’t go
away from the zoo. away from the signs on the street
away from where you see people behind paper houses.

that’s me in the corner
eating custard, yellow and chocolate
I thought that I heard you laughing
I am discolored and I saw you try
I have to be there at 15 past any hour.

we could be anywhere
poke strawberries like you don’t know what they taste like
the distance in your eyes is folded into neat domestics.
every whisper of you, echoes in my waking hours.
that’s me, with a music box under my palate, pins plucking
the comb teeth, strawberries on your nipples.

**

that’s me in the corner
that is me where you are not
the kite in your hair threads up and go to a cloud
never back. in the picture,
you are cubed-in like a docile pet version of yourself.

every whisper is mine. and yours.
I’ll share air with your animals
blinded fool. you are daring too much
I set it up so you have crowns on your head
until you fall on your knees from flailing in
the kitchen of food and fruits.

your fantasies in the fridge
your fantasies under the table
in the sheets and in the windows
binoculars broken to pieces.
the perversion of normal things and scissors
cutting hair cuticles until you look pretty,
and kissable.

the air I’ll sniff in one hair of yours,
inflating – deflating,
until I crash in your body like an accident
that arrived at your door and stayed in your unfinished basement.

like your mother is a post post post post punk
with pink umbrellas asking for money
at 23rd and 6th avenue,
like you spell the F’s, N’s, R’s, the greens and red
of the trains under the city because you are going somewhere
like sewage is the fluid lost and full, fool, it gurgles
under your urban feet in cool shoes.

wasting myself out of purposes, vomit,
the pillz I’ll toss in canisters of nothings
to see you sober. purple. laughing like a miniature of you would
in a sugar can. swimming in your own saliva like
you have nowhere else to go.
oh no. I am sad too much
I haven’t been sad enough.

**

your poems
I sniffed them like a dog, like a liver, hungry

like there are million clocks in the room
and I can’t see you anymore
like we are dispatching time to a small space with an overnight carrier
and the space is converted to a corner-less, wall-less cube of air made to breathe.

the layers I would peel off your face
to find your skeleton bare and clown
laughing hysterically with floating balloons filled with air of color.

prep me with wigs for a laughter
dansking instead of dancing
oh life. is bigger.
it is bigger than me and me is not you.
the things I’d go to, the distance in your eyes.
I set it up so that’s me in the corner,
in the spot. and light
losing my reflection.
tossing pillows on beds.
tossing beds in the valley
and sheets on tightropes
losing teeth and tossing kisses in the one gas that fills your lung.

every whisper, every waking hour.
I am trying to keep my eyes on you
like a hurt lost blinded fool. fool.
watermelons, chopped,
eaten, left-overed.
clowns at circuses of offices
gesturing to people wearing costumes of thirds of wings.
then, fractions at night. equal parts of one part.

leave tea alone into the air;
without a cup. that’s me dancing inside tomato seeds
licking the sun. the moon. and dotty stars
that are smaller than me, and life is bigger than them.

**

when you fly with a half a wing
I work on fractions all night
quarter wings are okay too.
or thirds. infinitesimal. invisible,
like when you are too big to be seen. like you are not me.

your intestines are all tucked in
the abdomen of someone else
they, your intestines, work for money
for long hours. in offices. your biology is dreadful and soft
your livers flailing in brown and doused in drugs
for ecstasies found in kisses, awards, firsts and lasts
and also in fruits, like cherries.

I think I thought I saw you try
try, cry, why try?
just a dream.

every whisper I sip from half of your lips
hurt, lost and blinded fool. fool.
the mantle of your vertical body, thrill.

I am draining fantasies like a blood let,

the windows I’d borrow to make a city
to wander around at night
and look at you throwing your self in dances
between the corners of walls

trying to keep up with you
I don’t know if I can do it

to know others get very hungry too.

just a dream

and then those small people sailing in coffee drinks
crossing every border you imagine
and living in the most foreign of familiar places.

**

oh life, is bigger.
the polished shoes and
the pictures I’d take of myself
to set myself up for light. spotlight.
to get your kiss on the neck.
to be enough.

I thought that I heard you laughing.
I thought that I heard you sing.

Every whisper is loud and marching
to the lung.
not being knowed is the same as not being known.
analog kisses in twinkle lights
circuiting in the bones of copper
of these unrealistic robots that
read bedtime stories for alone pink people.

that was just a dream.

I left kisses for you at the door,
in the closet, in apricots and peaches.
I left kisses for you in the blanket
in the hours you are absent, in the hours
you are somewhere else, or someone else
I heard that I thought you sing.

every whisper, every waking hour
consider this. I made a diamond skeleton of myself
I put it on display in my window at night, it blinks.
consider this. when I die, donate it for rings for people poor
and committing to bare kisses.