Here’s to futurity,
to some existence projected forward
onto a wall, like Brief Encounter in the basement
while I mouth the words along with Celia
Johnson—oh those doorway eyes—& a little light
sneaks on in through those little porthole
windows we have, & here’s to those little windows
& to windows, I like how they’re clear
& still & get dirty so easy, & I like how most
of the time all those words describe me too,
I like the way Trevor Howard’s voice sounds describing
anything really, the coal in a person’s lungs,
the way capital crushed a person into lungs like that,
& here’s to lungs that keep on going
until they don’t, like my grandfather’s, which worked
enough to see him through the Depression,
just a kid, his father left to make sure the family could
get benefits, & then one day my grandfather’s lungs
stopped working,
all that labor unpaid for, unacknowledged
’til the body realized nothing lives without it, & I wish
Trevor Howard would take some dust from my eye,
so I could blink & see through tears the lovely world
all its smog & violence & love, its love
& all the ways we are kept away from that love,
& here’s to love, to “may you bury me,” my baba
& his desperation, & we’re both not working now,
& isn’t it clear how nothing lives without
us? & right now I’m dreaming of tomorrow,
the next day, the next year, my grandfather’s
next year, his first year, my baba’s tomorrow,
his today, & sometimes I’m afraid he might
in fact bury me, but I choose to believe in the power
of Arab love, & that some day before his lungs go
on their strike, we might all of us go on our own,
so when I’m cradling my baba’s head, his hair
silver like a black & white movie, the end of our long
encounter, I’ll maybe do so in a world we both
longed for, all of us acknowledged, all of us closer
to God and therefore closer to each
other. & here’s to futurity: my promise to myself
that my lungs will work until they don’t,
that I’ll thank them every day, and soak in a little
light from my beautiful, stupid little porthole
windows, I’ll be clear & a little dirty, I’ll be Celia
Johnson & I’ll feel too much and remind myself,
This can’t last. This misery can’t
last. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness
nor despair.
Fargo Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist. His writing can be found in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, the Shallow Ends, Mizna, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, and elsewhere. Find more at fargotbakhi.com.
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