Trembling
Like a child
I run, a little farther
And there is home
Shaking and numb
I can still feel his hands
Holding me against his
Foreign, unknown, cold
His body, a territory I know not
This stranger who holds me
For what seems an eternal time
I pray, for that is all I know
Afraid
Will he take me away?
And then he leaves
I can still hear his motorbike
Fading, the wheels crashing
An eternal ring in my ears
I run, a little farther
And there is home
I am safe
Still, hearing the sound of his fading motorbike
Farther and farther, until no longer…

I like that I sleep on a bed with a green blanket. The design is simple: funky swirls, circles, round, lime and dark. But the metal bars hurt my back when I lean against them to read, or write. At night, as I sleep, turning my body, my feet touch the bars and I feel caged in. I want to break free, but my feet don’t move, I am bounded. This happens often in the night, tossing, turning.

I fall. At last. And there is just darkness, a tunnel in which the subconscious lies. I dream about a boy who holds me. I do not know his name, but he looks familiar, like we’ve met before in another time. The car moves, and she turns her head, looking at us, nodding approval, smiling, sweet and candid. He continues to play with my hair. I am wrapped around him, warm, like how I am wrapped in my blanket. The driver, she doesn’t look back. She drives without words. How peaceful I feel, wrapped in his warmness, and filled with tranquility, still touched by her repeating smile.

Morning. I remember us, and how she smiled like she was happy. But the other one, she had said nothing. My mother had said nothing the whole time, but drove on, somewhere else. She was not ours.

On the highway to Baltimore, you can go 65 miles per hour. Once you reach that speed, you no longer feel how fast you are going. Your body and mind both adjust to the speed, you go back to your regular conversation with whoever is accompanying you, and everything outside, the trees, houses, cars, and other objects become smaller and smaller. This is a good speed. It's not too safe and not too crazy, an average of all the limits.

On our way to Baltimore, the sky splits into two layers of pink and purple. Things are happening fast and I can't feel if winds are changing, or if this is just what happens on a late September evening. I tell her to look at this pretty sight, but she is watching the road, and what's ahead. What's ahead of us is really just one vast pathway, wide and open, limitless, but indefinite. What's ahead are cars that fly forward in a speed that has long surpassed 65. What's ahead are birds that fly in shape of a V, the way kids draw them on paper, over and over again. What's ahead of us, of me and her, is an illusive picture, one of those dreams we created long ago and left abandoned because there was simply no time to ponder about it. Inside that picture, somewhere behind the colored clouds and diffused sounds, we each think of that pleasing state of nature, and there comes a beautiful silence in which we fly forward, in our own dreams, in our own indefinite stopping points.

Mano to ashegh nashodim...Delaye ma par nadaran.
You and I did not fall in love...our hearts have no wings.

Lost in that beautiful, sad song, we drive to Baltimore, meet with M and his wife, and are introduced to M's college friend Amir. In the night, we walk the dead town, drink coffee, and find things to talk about. We are all the same, lost in our forsaken lands, always retelling the stories of how we got here.

On our way back, in a pitch black curtain, we wish that our hearts had wings. Then, maybe, we could fly, indefinitely.

On this sunny day,
In the sun room
Sitting, around clutters of French baguette,
And cheese, olives and pepper
They bring in a bottle of unopened
Wine.
This very wine that has sin written all over
This very wine that I forbid myself to look upon
This very wine that my children are supposed
To refrain from.
Yet here they are.
Drinking.
Laughing.
But they change.
The children you raise and appraise
The children you teach, the learned
Right before you, 30 years later,
And they are not the same
Drinking sin.
Talking sin.
No, they are not what you thought
And you have no say, not after 30 years
Not today.
Their glasses clinging,
I lower my gaze, staring at the ant crawling on my shoe
They raise theirs, and ask I break my silence.
But they are asking me to accept and adhere
To their reprisal.
After years of abiding by our dreams
They now turn their back
And drink, and expect.
I bear this heavy guilt, as red and thick as their wine.

I don’t want to be dead. I was driving today, and a leaf fell forward, smacked the front window, and continued its way past the car. In that moment, I smiled. The leaf was alive, almost dancing to the wind outside my head. I was to write about it. I was to write about being alive, about the very things that I pass on the way home, the things that normally are thought to be lifeless, inanimate. And yet they have more life than my breathing soul.
I don’t want to be the dead writer who thinks. I want to live again, and feel what I write, like how I feel the burning sensation of a hot tea at the tip of my tongue, like how I feel the blackness of coffee without cream, the bitterness of black. I was alive yesterday and I liked the pattern of every breath. There was a song in my head, not a happy, dumb little tune, but a fast, live beat. I will be damned if I don’t snap out of this deadness. I am going to be living, writing, not giving a damn about being a great storyteller. Great is an empty word if that’s all you aim for. I’m not empty. I’m not dead. Tell me to rewrite and I’ll do it. Tell me to work it out, fix and revise. I’ll do it. I won’t stand here and tell you how damn empty and lifeless my fingers have become, or how nothing in this room speaks. And the ladybug on my ceiling is gone. I can’t find her. She was here for days. I don’t know what about this room attracted her, for even the air is mortifying and beaten.

I like her hair. The gray locks speak; they speak like the poet does herself. The room we spend an hour and fifteen minutes in smells like fresh apples. I’m just kidding.
They all look creative, these fresh faces whom I’ve never encountered before. They look like they have a lot to write and say. They look like they’re important and have something to give back to society. They are not just consumers. Yeah, they are a creative bunch. You can tell they’ve got something if you just look at them, and how they’re dressed. There is one kid who likes to be funny, and he actually is. And there is this other kid who likes to argue everything, which is good because it forces the rest of us to think. And maybe he is right; maybe “I love you” has in fact become cliché.
This is a creative writing class and we all think we’re writers.
I guess we are.

Talk. Talk. Speak like you are running and there is no end and you have to keep running because someone is chasing you and if you stop you will no longer be. Talk. Speak like the way you write and you write well and you know how to put words together.

Talk. Baby you are young enough to break this silence and get out of your indispensable skin. Baby you are old enough to give up this fear and just run like you’ve never ran before. Talk baby talk.

Stop with the trying and the counting and pretending there are no stars in this black configuration. Stop with the pretense. Be real and run away from this inhibited, fearful, sad skin. Cut through, like a razor that cuts your wrist and bleeds, filling a tub. Cut through and start talking and speaking and then run fast from yourself.

Tomorrow I want you to talk. Tomorrow I want you to be running real fast and not stopping to catch a breath because then you’ll think of writing again.

Speak baby. Speak

And then run.

Legs crossed, popping bubble gum in a cafe in Madrid, a handsome sailor, smoking, a tattoo on his shoulder, reading the daily paper, built but not too big, 6'1. The crowd moving about, middle of the afternoon, hours before the night storm, sun is out, not too hot, just mild, coffee-kind of temperature, everything set in everyday motion, the mailman riding his bike across, the soldiers coming back from duty, nothing worries, nothing threatens, no danger of walking across to the sailor's, asking for a lighter. He looks at you, and smiles his charming smile, and says "sure thing miss", and watches you leave...a thousand things run through your head. Should you turn around, give him a good, long, look, ask for his number nonchalantly like it's your everyday kinda thing, or should you keep walking gracefully, but carelessly like nothing in the world bothers you, like you don't see any possibility of wrong. So you are walking like this, and then you see these cute children, they're around elementary age, and they're so happy and pretty, licking candy, and singing a Spanish tune. But you, you don't pay attention because right now you are pretty and they look at you, as you step across, skipping over a puddle and your skirt flows, hips curving to the right, then left. You are indifferent to the city's noise...
And then you are standing across your apartment. No one has followed you. You threw that cigarette away right after you passed the sailor because you don't smoke anyway. The mailbox is empty. Yesterday you picked up your letters. You look up to the pale blue sky and a plane flies in a smooth curve, making you feel dreamy. You turn the key, push yourself inside, and your skirt is caught between the door. The cat is asleep. You make coffee and there is a ring, you're awake and you write everything down so you don't forget the pretty dream with the handsome sailor.

Fall rain makes that lasting taste of coffee on your mouth much sweeter than it actually is. I have the car keys tonight. I also have the radio blasting nothings, and tiny drops of rain wetting my mascaraed lashes. The bookstore is quiet and lifeless on this late evening. I am consuming caffeine, but am not particularly tired. Fridays are my days off, though they weren't supposed to be. I purposely scheduled my Fridays free so I could work, but ever since I stopped the useless job-haunt, they've now turned into a beautiful addition of my weekend. I probably sound way more middle-class than I actually am. But really I'm just a broke college kid with zero dollars in savings. I live with my parents so I can avoid rent and get free food from my mother. I have no right to be picky about finding a mediocre job that pays 9 or 10 dollars an hour. I have no right to complain about newspapers who don't want to hire an amateur/journalist-wannabe. I shouldn't be taking Salsa lessons on Thursday nights at the Dance Factory worth a 63 dollar check I never had.

I don't know what gives me the right to drink Starbucks and not think about who'll pay in the end. I like to think I'm not spoiled, but what I am if not spoiled? Why did I stop the job-haunt? Was it that impossible to find work? Or is it just that I like being able to think and listen to music on a 24/7 basis and exercise?

I should start looking again. I should be a better citizen...

I went to bed last night, bitterly sad by the strange notion of unimportance. It was as if I realized loneliness in a more realistic sense. I felt helpless, going to bed, the lights out, shut off from the chilly winds. I remembered an earlier attempt at poetry, which, as was pointed out to me, was only “vague notions of poetry”. I also remembered that ever since we’ve begun the dreadful assignments of poetry exercises, I’ve lost that very little sense of structure I had. I am not a poet. I don’t even know what I am anymore. Why am I living to write? Or am I really writing to live?

I want to curse the world, but then again, I change my mind and go back to bed. And I wake up to another bitterly cold morning. I make my breakfast and go about my day, sit in my writing class, suddenly wondering if I really belong. This voice keeps saying, “who do you think you are?” And there is that bitter laughter in the end. Who the hell do you think you are? What? You are Iranian; oh you came at a young age to live your American Dream! Right! Bull. What is this crap? Who the hell do you think you are when nobody cares.

They don’t do they? I mean, you are reading this, for some reason. But does it really matter that I just declared my dissatisfactory attempts, or that I like to talk about myself?

Tell me. Why are you reading?!

I don’t like the stars tonight. They give me a funny feeling, a feeling I can’t even describe. They’re beautiful by all means, glittering, shining, but down here, it’s dark and starless. In the pitch of dark, I imagine so many things, the temptation to walk barefoot in all blindness. I imagine the silence, without the crickets that crick ‘till dawn. I imagine the earth stopping to turn, stopping everything in full momentum and a sudden crash that puts an end to my headache. If the earth were to stop turning, I’d stop thinking, I’d stop turning with it. I’d stop with everything that makes me a shattered individual. There is nothing wrong with this world, but everything. Every goddamn thing that goes is wrong. War and guns, the addiction to kill, the obsession to possess and sex, to desire to be a hero in all the mess and corruption. There is nothing wrong except our dreams. The problem with us is we get carried away with self-worth and individual power. We hear the word freedom and we want to run and rescue everyone who isn’t living it the way we do. I get a funny feeling in this pitch dark that everything we are doing is going to shape the next generation. The thing is I’m not sure we are doing a great job shaping them. We are not exactly teaching. We’re obsessing and talking the talk, wrapped in the fight of us and those we call terrorists.

This isn’t what I imagined when I first learned I have a right to an imagination. I didn’t imagine fear and helplessness, nor did I imagine hypocrisy and contradiction. I didn’t imagine that this is what we’d become: observing how our soldiers die, how their citizens die, how our men fight, and how their men resist intrusion. I imagined starlight because I was an idealist. I idealized what everyone else idealized about a great land. When you’re 11 and don’t know shit about politics, money, sex, guns, drugs, and happy endings, you believe what they tell you to believe because it’s prettier. Everything without detail is pretty because you make up the details yourself; you become the writer and the painter and the illusionist.

But writing is shit if you have no details to paint a sad, starless night. Writing is shit if you have no music to back up the word before and the word after. Writing isn’t worth writing without describing that very funny, strange, hollow feeling at the end of a night that leaves you completely estranged. You become every word and every detail. You become the great land in which every teacher appraised and criticized you only to make you better.

Shit. This night isn’t pretty at all and there is not a single star and if I fooled you by the very fist line, then you’ll have to excuse my imagination. You see, the world still turns you upside down no matter how you think of it, no matter how well you write it. Your whole mind turns and shakes and you stumble, but you don’t exactly fall. You just cope and wake up to walk in your damn shoes and make peace with the self everyone wants you to love and respect.

I respect the self. I respect my country and this country and this earth. I respect who I’ve become and who I was because nothing will make sense otherwise. And I’ll give you something real. I’ll tell you how the deceiving night looks from my window, looking down below from the 5th floor: A sidewalk, a single light, a mass of grass with the music of the crickets in the background, a couple of empty balconies with empty chairs. There, that’s pretty damn good picture.

My mother needs boxes so she can pack old books that were never read, dictionaries, papers and photo albums, among the other miscellaneous, but necessary space holders. The two of us head out at midnight to one of the 24-hour drug stores and get 10 cardboard boxes. We put them in the back seat and the trunk, then take a silent breath, and start driving back home. There is no need to say what we are thinking. We roll the windows down and smell the night on the silent streets.

Eight years back, we had no belongings in cardboard boxes. We had three suitcases, the bare minimum of cash, and an empty apartment with nothing but a Persian rug. I remember standing in the middle of what was to be my room, refusing to accept what I clearly had not imagined to be my American home. I remember nostalgia for lack of better words. And now, I feel that feeling, but with less heaviness.

I have not yet seen the house in Cedar Lane. We should be moving in two weeks. I have not packed. I have not thought about packing or using any of the boxes. I like feeling that we are not changing who we are because I like what we became during these eight years. I like waking up to who I became in this room, even in the loneliest and most troublesome times. But I’ll pack too, in cardboard.

The silence of what doesn’t come to me is preferable to the actual words. In this silence I can find solace. I can stop fighting with myself. The silence of the windows and the clock sooth my mind so well I don’t even want to write.

I am trying to think of what matters most right now. But then, there is nothing. When I think about it, nothing matters. Time doesn’t matter. I can sit here all night and I still won’t find the right words to replace this great silence.

It’s best I stop right here. It’s best I let go of the crippled mind…

Night drags for those who left, but for us ends because we get tired of standing awake, driving along in traffic with sirens and watchdog cops. For us, the days are too little, yet we complain because they feel long and unnecessary. When we stand in line, pulling out our wallets, staring at strangers who push their carts around aisles, aimlessly and yet out of necessity, we think we’ve been standing there for hours, stilled in time.

I feel like that sometimes. I don’t mind traffic too much. I like resting my arms on the wheel and staring into the rearview mirror at drivers who think they can’t be seen. One time I looked and a lady in white hair blew a bubble, a funny thing I laughed at. But time drags when I wait for a dim coffee, or in checkout grocery lines or for my mother to cook us lunch.

I imagine for soldiers it’s different. Night and day are the same. Nights drag into days and days become endless nights. I imagine they wait longer. I imagine they sleep less. They must drag themselves with time, fighting an absurd war against confused men.

No one’s bulletproof. No one’s armed against inhumane hurricanes.

I imagine he didn’t dream to one day blow up into pieces of thin air to be a called a hero.

No one’s bulletproof.

Day and night, I wonder when we’ll leave in peace, the sounds of sirens and guns and blood covered instead by silence.

I don’t write war. I never lived through one. I don’t know how it feels, and maybe I am not entitled to imagine such unimaginable crimes. But I am a person and in my head I have thoughts that need to speak. There is a need for me to begin my day and end it, just so I can start all over.