asmarani makes prayer by Safia Elhillo
asmarani makes prayer
Safia Elhilloverily everything that is lost will be
given a name & will not come back
but will live forever& verily a border-shaped wound will
be licked clean by songs naming
the browngirl in particular verily she
will not heal but verily the ghosts will
not leave her alone verily when asked how
she got her name if telling the truth she
will say [a woman died & everything
wants a home]
MARGINALIA
1.
I find myself at the bottom of the barrel again. Scraping at whatever I can scrape. Again and again. Again and again. What is insanity, and I don’t say that lightly.
2.
I’m exhausted at wearing my pain around my neck like an identification card. I’m exhausted of being apologetic for being this way, and yet I can’t find any other way to be.
3.
Every time I patch myself up, another wound blooms somewhere, in some corners of my self I thought I’d already killed.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in The January Children by Safia Elhillo, published by University of Nebraska Press, 2017. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
ABOUT SAFIA ELHILLO
Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. She is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award; Girls That Never Die (One World, 2022), featured on the Indie Bestseller list the week of September 7, 2022; and the novel in verse Home Is Not a Country (Make Me a World, 2021), longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of a California Book Award and an Author… (more)
Read more poems by Safia Elhillo • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Twitter • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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wmloving
{{{ <3 }}}
Briana
I am holding your heart in my heart. I am imagining you, wherever you are, surrounded by light. I am asking all good powers that be to hold you and rock you, keep you safe and bring healing to your every wound. Much love, dearest T.
beth@portychalkstorm
You and I, let’s go to the recycling bank together with all the bottles we can find and smash them, I mean really smash them as hard as we can, until, until we are laughing or crying or maybe just breathing just that much more.