Break Clustered
by Suheir Hammad
All holy history banned. Unwritten books predicted future, projected the past, but my head unwraps around what appears limitless: man’s creative violence.
Whose son shall it be? Which male child will perish a new day? Our boys’ deaths galvanize. We cherish corpses. We mourn women, complicated. Bitches get beat daily. Profits made, prophets ignored. War and tooth enameled salted lemon childhoods. All colors run, none of us solid.
Don’t look for shadow behind me. I carry it within. I live cycles of light and darkness. Rhythm is half silence. I see now, I never was one and not the other. Sickness, health, tender violence, I think now I never was pure. Before form I was storm; blind, ign’ant - still am. Humanity contracted itself blind, malignant. I never was pure.
Girl spoiled before ripened. Language can’t math me. I experience exponentially. Everything is everything. One woman loses 15, maybe 20, members of her family. One woman loses six. One woman loses her head. One woman searches rubble. One woman feeds on trash. One woman shoots her face. One woman shoots her husband. One woman straps herself. One woman gives birth to a baby. One woman gives birth to borders. One woman no longer believes love will ever find her. One woman never did. Where do refugee hearts go? Broken, dissed, placed where they are not from, don’t want to be missed. Faced with absence. We mourn each one or we mean nothing at all.
My spine curves spiral. Precipice running to and running from human beings. Cluster bombs left behind. De facto land mines. Smoldering grief. Harvest contaminated tobacco. Harvest bombs. Harvest baby teeths. Harvest palms, smoke. Harvest witness, smoke. Resolutions, smoke. Salvation, smoke. Redemption, smoke.
Breathe.
Do not fear what has blown up.
If you must, fear the unexploded.
