Bits

With a mole on her index,

Hello, my name is Mitra.
I’m married to a man who beats me, I forgot his name in our first day when he said call me “Agha” not “Some name” that I couldn’t hear at the echo of his fingers ripping my earlobe to take my gold earrings.
I’m married because I went to school, after my brother had beaten me up and told me that I’m a disgrace to the family by daring to leave the dishes unwashed and walk my figure and heart to school. He came to me the next morning “My palms got hurt from the hardness of your skull, you will get married tomorrow.”
I packed my skin and scattered blood and left to the man’s house.
I’m pregnant now, watching TV next to the man who will beat me up if I, with my small brain and weak body that will get me no where in life (All according to the men in my life, of course.)  didn’t carry a boy in me. We’re watching what happened in Syria, he’s swearing at the screen and I’m begging my blood veins to let me know that what I’m keeping in my guts is a little girl. I want to take her to school, I’ll let her be educated enough to tell a world out.
And if her father beat her up to death, I will take her body walk seas and desserts till I reach to a man with a camera and tell him “Look at us, too.”
But if he didn’t, I’ll teach her how to greet in smiles, and how to dance when it rains and how to write poetry using ash and I’ll tell her that people who live on these lands are afraid of goodbyes, so they count the dead but not the harmed yet alive.. So she better not buy textbooks to count the trail of the ones who left but buy them to count the seconds she needs to soothe a lazy corner in someone’s lips so they’d be able to smile again or inform some one that their hands can do what fairytales claim to lie about. 

Dear 8 year old me,

stop dreaming so big, you’re not financially fortunate enough to do so.

                                                                       My apologies for breaking your heart,
                                                                                                   18 year old you.

Reflection,

Her skin was crumbled and waved in wrinkles. Two greens and autumns of hazel were gathered around two black dots, people called them eyes.
Through a layer of glass she looks like someone who’s been through war, abuse or poverty. While really all she went through is some heart ache and truth.

It has been 14 nights since they released him, our pillows are too soft for his head so he sleeps on the floor..

“I can’t sleep up here while your back gets even more hurt from the rough ceramic.”
He was laying his body to face a corner which rain has sneaked its way into our room.

You replied, not to my words but to the sigh of frustration that followed: “My knee hurt’s, I know I’m not supposed to complain because every inch of me is scarred but my knee hurts, just like it did when my father pushed me to the wall when I was 8.. I told you the story on-“
“Yeah I remember,”
“Good night.”

I waited till he fell asleep only to get more tired, swearing at men who collected his friends’ souls.
Sat, held his  leg and rested it on my thigh. Started talking to your knees, making friends with the least hurt part of you.
Pointing my finger on bits of his knee “Here is where he fell running away from the candy seller when he was five.
Here where he won his first race.
Here is his mother’s kiss.
Here’s where I dug my fingertips in our first night..
You know, I’m trying. To fix bone by bone, ache by ache so help me out.. Will you?”

You’d imagine a young woman like me would follow life’s basic rules that are printed all over the country but I couldn’t, I couldn’t let religion, medicine, philosophy tell me how to introduce myself to a whole new person with the memories and nightmares of two.
I didn’t wake him up that night, he woke up at 3 pm telling me he dreamed of  the man who shot his shoulder in prison; because they got new guns and he wanted to check if his worked.

Talk to me about weather,
the shapes of clouds your sighs helped to create

How warm the sun was
and how many new freckles it brought.

Tell me how breeze tried to distract you from reading my letters
imagining the number of voice tones in speaking your initials

Tell me how did the moon came back frowned
and how you stared at it for hours hoping you were in the wrong corner.

2056

There will be a Que,
Check if she has a rouge, check if she doesn’t break dishes.
Check if she can fake smile for a day
Knows the steps of making a sandwich.

Then you’re stepped into society,
where mistakes are made but not spoken of
where flaws are there but decorated with fashion.

And currency.

I invited you for a cup of coffee, it was too cold for anyone to want your skinny bones around him.
You told me about the first man that took your dress off.
Told me about how everything impossible bended to possible under his sheets, your young wrinkles were just a path for your smile to stretch further and your back was just his favorite track for his dance to be free.
Then interrupted your past’s way of getting you by laughing at your clumsiness “I always end up having frozen coffee!”
“I’ll heat it for you, go on..”

You smiled and looked down to tell me about him being ageless under sheets, how you weren’t afraid of your love of shaping a wolf out of clinched palms.
I gave you back your share of black warmth.. You drank it remembering the chocolate stuck in his teeth and dried blood of his abused mother stuck in the valleys between his fingers, you smiled foolishly reasoning that the reason he held you so tight was that your father had a bad temper and he was as worried as your lungs from falling apart all over again.

“I talked way too much, thank you for listening.. I have to go.. So yeah have a good night.”

I gathered the abandoned confidence I’ve been ditching all these years and replied
“Ummm.. You know what, I think you should stay. I- umm my sheets.. They’re warm enough too.”

You came closer, held my hand to let be together.