Poem I Jerifa Ahmed
The day I left home,
The skies cried, I didn’t.
A rebellious child turned rebellious teenager,
I left with a smile
In search of a land kinder than home.
Only I forgot, my homeland didn’t teach me
How to digest warm meals.
When I visited (I am a visitor) home again
I fell sick; ‘change of weather’ they said.
I wondered how could my body possibly forget,
The very first place it learnt to run away from?
The very first place it was chased away from?
But then I remember,
Home was never a place, always a memory.
The memory of the first act of cruelty I witnessed,
There was no blood and no one died,
So no one believed me when I said it was murder.
The memory of the first act of cruelty I committed,
There was blood and someone died,
So no one believed me when I said it was salvation.
Home is the blindfold on my eyes, the blood on my hands.
I remember my home a little differently every day,
And I’m struck by the realisation that
For the rest of my days, I’ll keep trying to catch a train
That’d bridge the gap between all that was and all that is.
And by a second, a minute, an hour, a day and by aeons,
I’ll keep missing it each time.
And then I think of the Mexican nanny from ‘Everything Everything’;
She was right when she said,
“You aren’t living if you aren’t regretting.”
Filled with lies and counterfeit dreams,
I mindlessly await my promised miracle,
Just like her, I have left one false world for another;
So I live and regret, I live to regret.
Perhaps this is the price we pay for wanting to have wings,
And sometimes in my dreams, I weep for Icarus,
As I whisper into the darkness,
Ready to drop my weapons, admit defeat,
“Home, you were never kind
But please give me back my sleepless nights
Take me back, please be cruel once again.”