“And do not spend wastefully. Indeed, the wasteful are brothers of the devils.” [Quran 17:26-27]
When they ask how I used my father’s money to buy [ ],
I will say: daughter is a synonym for regret. We were sincere
college girls, exhaling the after-morning musk
of our jilted mistakes. We fucked up. What else
can I say? We kissed everything with a knife’s heat.
The poetry was supposed to be about the snow dust
on the windowsill of the studio apartment where I practiced
generosity with other sweat-stained bodies. Yes, me
and my derelict girls. We hardly got a text back and thus
our Plathian hymns. Our friendship based on how evenly we split
the [ ]. How dangerous we could make our sadness
sound. We mistook romance for fortuity—the [ ]
pulling up on his bike was really only five feet tall. And he fell.
But he knew how to unhook a [ ] with one quick hand. At least
that’s what he said. Of course I thought of my father. But it wasn’t
fair. I wanted things too: guilt subsumed; a dirtied mirror.
Killing yourself was just the sound of someone else’s music next door.
There’s one photo in particular: JD with a [ ] in one hand
and [ ] in the other. Blanket to the chest. A stranger’s house
on Halloween. A smile goofy enough to make me pay
the difference and someone always went home crying.
I liked the clean breaks. I woke up
to nothing. America was a sink I could fill.
People clung to your arm so hard it almost broke off.
Maha Ahmed
Maha Ahmed is an English Literature & Creative Writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming inGrist,The Adroit Journal,580 Split,Rusted Radishes,The Recluse, and elsewhere. She loves talking about the Arab-American diaspora, late capitalism, World Literature, translation, and inter-religious history. She is currently the poetry editor atRusted Radishesand absolutely adores the gig. Find her on twitter @mahaahmed81.
