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- Love | U.G.

I had said to my love,
I want to be a place for you
- a soft place to eat and lie down.
I will not interfere,
I will be close and I will love you quietly
without disturbing.

He winced

I wound and unwound my mind around it,
focused and refocused my eyes on my self
To see that I am not just a place.
If I am a place to him, I am a jaanamaaz,
the clean carpet for your prayers
where you will press your forehead and say
Subhaana rabbiyal-a laa.

This is what women are:
clean and supportive surfaces.

As he lifts his head to allah hu akbar, 
I will shapeshift into the dome of the mosque
and as you greet the angels on your shoulders I will be the concrete sky
that absorbs the vibrations floating up to meet me,
ameen humming in my bones.

Ameen
with a sharp inward breath
I will be the bird on the minaret.
My voice rising before the sun
and as the azaan begins my perch will shake
And I will take flight instead of praying
I will soar
While men on the ground burn their arms
building planes and missiles
planning, calculating, sweating
to be stronger, faster, winners.
While they set fires
I will smell the smoke faintly rising and fly, looking sweet in the sky
faster, as the wind carries me, I’ll disperse into feathers and then just wind
I can be solid, I can be air.
I can hold you in my lap, sit on your shoulder, and then I can enter your lungs.
When the air smells a little sweeter, you will know it was me,

And you will say, this woman can be anything.
Women can change their form -
They told me every day my body should change,
Can change
With effort, with will.
I could be thinner, fairer
Then, I knew I could change my body
So why would I be
Just a smaller version of myself,
a version of myself who would burn in the sun
When I could be a golden dome:
a carpet, a bird, the wind dancing above the clouds

Why would I change my body to make a man love me
when men did nothing to be loved,
when men made me hollow?
No.
The wind will wrap around my wings
while my love kneels on me, gazes up at me, breathes me in
and loves me in all the forms I take.

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