Breadcrumb #565

EMILY BILMAN

When I make my first steps into
the wide sea and a swarm of juvenile 
gilt-breams swirl around my legs, 
I linger on the brink of the beryl-beach
like an infatuated maiden moon, 
my feet submerged in salt-water
as I sense the soft skins of the breams 
and rejoice in their silver transparencies –

Suddenly as I swim, I feel
frightened by my own shadow 
beneath me as if it were the shadow
of a wild thief possessing me 
or the unknown shadows of multitudes
threatening my communion
with the nurturing salt-water 
that did bear me as a child.

The gilt-breams still slide 
on the diaphanous waters,
their lithe dorsal fins bent down
like folded sails while I dive
head-down into the salt-water,
blessing each mineral ion oozing 
into my skin, carrying me into 
the depths, rendering me weightless.

While I swim back towards the shore
the gilt-breams slither along the breaths 
of the soft sands, their spines, secretly 
clasping their silver-shaded lamella
blending in their own transparencies, 
with their crimson phosphorescent 
gills, pumping mineral oxygen
like a marine heart bitter to the taste. 

*****

Juvenile fish always swim between my feet when I enter the seas of my childhood. I feel so very weightless when I float in the water. Swarms of juvenile bass or juvenile pike follow me into the blue-green sea as I walk through the dunes. They stretch for miles into the expanse like sea-breasts spreading plankton to nurture the fish and the currents and replenish the earth’s atmosphere with oxygen. When I swim, I defy gravity: in modes of crawl, backstroke or butterfly, I feel heft-free. I recall the softness of the juvenile fish-skins rubbing against mine and still cherish the sensation in my effective adult memory.

Like me in sea-water, astronauts defy gravity. But in zero gravity, their senses are blunted. They appreciate extremely spicy food to compensate for the dulling of their taste. They say that they even feel their vital organs floating inside their bodies when they move inside the shuttle, as if their organs were toy glass-marbles with which they played as children. Astronauts are constantly jet-lagged. Zero gravity also challenges their circadian rhythms of wake and sleep that get distorted, like the wayward clocks that Salvador Dali painted in The Persistence of Memory. 

As they look down at our spinning world, days become extended into mostly fifteen dawns surprising them like myriad suns rising through their shuttle windows. That’s how surprised I feel when wave is borne into wave with the sea wind and waves bear my half-swimming body to the safety of the shore. Then, as now, silver-finned fish swim around me with their diaphanous specter-like silhouettes and I feel refreshed. I have seen pictures of astronauts drifting around the space shuttle crawling into themselves like fetuses floating in the maternal womb. As archaic as primal sea creatures might seem to us, these pictures remind me of the snail fish slowly swimming in the freezing depths of the Mariana Trench.

Fascinated by life in space and under the seas ever since I remember, as a young girl, reading, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, I imagine men colonizing the sea-depths with cities built with impermeable nano-materials made of cellulose or vinyl or soft hybrid eco-leather to keep us safe in a subterranean environment. We would probably use the cellulose-covered plants as a model for the invention of such hermetic materials. We would move in and around the cities in water-proof cars and water-proof motorcycles. Our houses would be connected, each to each, by bridges and corridors, allowing us to move between them. We would communicate with each other through impermeable electronic devices. Our food would be delivered from the shore and we would keep a lot of stocks in refrigerators. 

“We wage war because we do not assimilate our proper shadows”

Robots would help deliver merchandise from the land as they would help with daily tasks. Our clothes would have to be made of vinyl-like materials that envelop woolen or cotton underclothes to keep us dry under water continually. Like the astronauts, we would drink fruit juices and consume smoothies bursting with vitamins. Above all, we would have to be extremely thrifty in our usage of water because it would have to be desalinated from sea-water and be transferred to our homes through water-tunnels made of stainless steel and other expensive non-corrosive metals. Like the astronauts, we would probably have to use ventilators and scrubbers to purify the air to enable us to breathe. 

I was surprised like a young astronaut seeing the world spin for the very first time, when the phone rang, and friends invited me to see an episode of Star Wars. I forsake my imagination to accept the invitation. After the movie, I wondered whether we would, indeed, fight to maintain our humanity in the quilted wild world of space exploration. It seemed odd that so much effort spent by human courage, mechanical precision, and recycled order that made space missions successful would be wasted on fighting star wars. 

But, then again, our pioneering and territorial needs, coupled with the competitiveness of space discovery, would turn space wars into an inevitable reality, whose only consolation would be to remain as humanly courageous and compassionate as possible. Yet, the hostility of the environment would unite us around our common humanity. As astronauts who use their daily food thriftily to survive in their shuttle, we would have to use our resources economically to survive in a hostile environment as barren as a waterless desert.

• • •

Breadcrumb #564

MERCY TULLIS-BUKHARI

My brother was, again, drunk, lying on the top step of the big church on the hill, the one with the bright bronze doors. He lifted his head to say, fuck you, to the bright bronze doors of the church, then he put his head back down on the step, closed his eyes, and cradled an empty bottle of Bacardi the way he cradled his stuffed elephant toy when he was a child. Our neighbor told my mother over the phone, your son is drunk again. Find your drunk son on the steps of that big church on the hill, the one with the bright bronze doors. No one walked towards him to shush him, said the neighbor, and the priest did not stop watching child porn in his private quarters to offer my brother forgiveness, and Jesus did not step down from his cross to make my brother a disciple, or even share a bottle of wine with him. That’s why he said, fuck you, to the big bronze doors of the church on the hill, the neighbor said. Jesus turned water into wine for people who could have had a wedding without wine, but my brother needed that wine to keep living. This ain’t no wedding; this is life. 

My mother, begged my father for a ride to the big church on the hill. Fuck no, he said. Fuck that drunk. You see, my brother was not my father’s son, so he washed his hands of any responsibility for him. My father did not have any guilt, of what he could have done wrong with my brother, if a wrong decision in his childhood made my brother so broken that he had to say, fuck you, to the doors of a church, the one on the hill, then fall asleep cradling a bottle, the way he cradled his stuffed elephant when he was a child. My mother, she lived with some guilt, I am sure, so she begged my father. Please, take me to him. I need help carrying him to his bed. Please, drive me to him. Fuck that, my father said. I may lose my parking spot. I need to wake up early in the morning. What would that teach him, if his mother constantly runs to him whenever he falls drunk on the steps of a church. My father still drove her, though. My father really was saying fuck you to the man who never responded to my brother’s letters. That man sent that stuffed elephant to my brother with a promise of connection, then cut that connection as soon as my brother said, I love you, Pop. Thank you for the elephant, Pop. I love you. 

“Please, take me to him. I need help carrying him to his bed.”

He was on the top step of the church, cradling his stuffed elephant, I mean empty Bacardi bottle. The gold doors shined behind my brother, and my mother, walked up the hill, then step by step by step by step by step, to the doors of the church to get to my brother. In that bible story, the son returns to the family, but at this church, the mother was returning to the son. My mother, went to him and pulled the bottle away from his arms. Startled, he yelled, fuck you, when the stuffed elephant, I mean the Bacardi bottle, was out of his arms. My mother said, this is your mother. Watch your mouth. Get up now. Someone may see you. He said, fuck you, again. My mother said, we don’t want people talking about you being a drunk outside of a church. He said fuck you again, then cried. My mother said, don’t cry out here, son. Let’s go to your bed. She carried the stuffed elephant, I mean, the empty bottle, I mean the stuffed elephant, I mean the empty bottle, because leaving an empty Bacardi bottle at the church would be an affront to Jesus and crosses and saints and solid bronze doors and priests who watch child porn. She placed his arm around her shoulder, placed her arm around his waist, then walked to the car. My mother, walked my brother and the elephant, I mean the empty bottle, to the car. The car running, my father looked ahead waiting patiently to hear the backseat car door close. My mother knew her burden, but she loved him. If she was the only person who did love him, she was going to love him.

• • •

Breadcrumb #563

HIBAH SHABKHEZ

Colours, they tell me, can mix, merge and let
Their selves slide and collide and fudge
And not lose in what is what they have been.
Soit. D’accord. But then
Why does egg-yolk falling on the carpet
Turn into a sickly brown smudge
If its yellow and this blue should make green?

Through all of history,
Tapestries were made from monies of men
Heedless of green beauty.
How then should a thread dare
To see its tapestry?

One drop means nothing, but
A thousand mean a blest shower of rain.
Those are your words that shut
Out questions. Does thread care,
Mind, when you snip it free?

I must tread the fate of the thread again,
For I too wish to walk upon the lips
Of an avalanche. Be deluged and live.
Be myself the kraken, myself sunk ships.
Would I make it to green? Or egg-like give
All, and be nothing?

• • • • • •

Breadcrumb #562

KASHAF GHUMMAN

I keep Jasmine-scented candles at my side table

The smell takes me back to you in a dim lit room 

To evenings spent playing the "who will reach nano first" game

I always won

Maybe because I made the game, but I wanted to make you laugh

When your face stitched itself close from your aching loss

Every day you would wake dawn up with your gentle reminder of a due good bye

And fill a silver bowl with tiny Jasmine flowers

When you were happy you would place them in your ears

The elongated loops through which I could see 

Beyond your gray, black, henna-tinged hair 

You smelled of jasmines, your ears, your hair, your palms and your golden bangles

Your room smelled of jasmines, your comb, your woolen socks, your handmade quilts and your rusted henna bowls

Your jasmines were always soft and wet

Succulent from the tears you hid among them

By the end of the day they would turn brown and shriveled in elegiac discontent

And you would retreat further away from us

Feeble in your restraint but obstinate in your sorrow

And that's when we knew it was time to leave

• • •