sara h. hammami

self portrait, 2022.

someone must have wondered once how to go back & oh,
the years spent dreaming truly the want hangs off the tongue like a tea in wait i
think mostly that oh i wanted cowards cannot wish
for anything softer than a date pit the hole of a person is a heavy thing to gorge on i
gag on the remainder every day i fill a little more of my skull with sand that had
lined my windows they pile pathetic attempts to recreate the dunes out of trash we have all died
the small death there will never be moving past it what else can one say on horror before
we could have been anything in a life too far from this one i feel nothing not a blip nothing like this
is ever affixed to my spine it is a painless rendering and
really ache is a holy thing was
it not enough to be in
suspension forever it is always oblivion,
forgotten.

TEMPORADA DE TORMENTAS

you know, i always imagined falling in love in the kroger’s right down my street. i mean, right down the street right next to my street. i mean, i think i fell in love for the first time in the kroger’s right down my street. i mean, right down the street right next to my street. i mean, i fell in love for the first time in the kroger’s right down my street. i mean, right down the street right next to my street. i had a whole daydream. i would kiss someone for the first time in my childhood bedroom. my old, worn mattress would encase us both, pillowed in home. truly, i wish i could go home. i think all the time about the lines time could have taken to let me live out a singular daydream. all of them are so precious to me. too precious to me. i want to confess my soul. i want to cradle it in honey & leave it out under a hot sun. watch the bees descend. a force so far outside of the body that i am halted in any attempt to breathe. think. dream. i wanted someone to be braver than me & still coax me out to climb on the window outside of my room. to have lay on the roof and dream about the sun. the unholy scorch. the dense wood lay right under our feet. of course, i’ve developed a fear for the dark. i want to sip it slow, smooth yearning ironed into my tongue. do you ever think about the way stress compounds into dna? like, mama mourned us all into drought. no, no. nothing started with her. running is integral to survival. how to unlearn movement? how to build pain into the network of your body? how to misfire & mishear & turn the clouds into cameras. they are watching, you know. nothing you say is in a vacuum. i think only god knows all i think but i know that is not true. maybe it would have been easier to be alone before there was choice. now i am always self eulogizing. i am sorry you had to hear of my death this way. the truth is, nothing got to me. i am simply exhausted of it all. the knowledge that i am too lazy for. i don’t want to know anymore. how to pray over a body. how to wash a body. how to turn the body into a funeral site. how to push it until it breaks. how to push the mind until it is cemented, forever, in abyss. i thought i would be prayed over in my childhood masjid. still loved. woodland phlox petaling my airway. i wish there had only ever been an abundance of time. only mothers bring good weather. it’s been chipping away at me slowly ever since my first arrival.

INSHALLAH, INSHALLAH, INSHALLAH,

i eat the sun on a sunday. it drips down my throat, all the sweetness of a
great white peach. quiero bailar contigo, amor, it’s
imperative we do.
qué pasó, paso, paso,
i care more about the sounds
scintillating caress, suck on suspiro,

suspiro caught in my throat, la luna se despierta rosada & we all kiss salt off the shells washed up on
shore, sold for un singun peso, i’m reimagining life where i am happy & i gorge myself, wail on the
ravine of endless possibility, it’s exhilarating, all the life i stick my hands into, all the want i let myself
have, kindness looks like so many things, i pick up the small winged thing off a much-too-large-sunflower
& it gives me a much-too-large-rose & i tend a tune & gift it to them & it titillates it back to me, shaded
under this canopy of whisper-paper-soft-petals, i swirl & twirl & whirl into whipped merengue, sticky
spun sugar/i know it’s too late to introduce new conventions let me/try anyways/i keep breaking walls in
these poems/i want to say so clearly que/tequierotequierotequierotequiero/y te deseo que sueñes bien/y te
deseo que amas/the way we dream about in the quiet of it all/

AND ANYWAYS DID YOU HEAR ABOUT
THAT SONG THAT TIME I DANCED THE WHOLE
NIGHT & IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL & IF THIS IS A VOICEMAIL
I SING WITH THE DIAL TONE & I WISH YOU A LOVELY SPRING
& I’LL SEE YOU AGAIN. I’LL SEE YOU AGAIN. I’LL SEE YOU AGAIN
& i’ll love you always. i’ll love you always.