Rage, rage against the dying...*
	
The years are a mountain on my back
This once-solid pillar now straining

beneath the weight of every coming dawn.
This version of death reveals itself like snapshots

in a photo album, where nostalgia clings to space
in a room despair has gleefully laid a wreath.

Here my hands carve my fear into my body, tracing
the lines of aches and pains born anew

snaking across the furrows of winking wrinkles,
and I learn how much resentment feels like a funeral shroud.

I learn of this shrinking; this sprawling
gracelessness, this curling into shadow.

I learn how wanting the things you can't have
becomes a mourning of its own.

Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.


(*The title of the poem is taken from Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night”)

Baba
When your father dies, say the North,
you are left cradling a broken wind rose to your chest
I spent my childhood riding the weight of your shoulders and did not know
I was sharing it with the world. Until they wrapped you up in cloth and
bathed you in dhikr. Until the adhan was called and the doctor
that murmured the time and cause of your death—heart attack, 2:00 am—showed up
for your janazah wearing practiced sorrow like his best clothes.
When your father dies, say the East,
he takes away the light of your world. 
I do not know how to breathe air you do not exhale, so I am left choking
on the whiffs of memory fighting for space with the incense
Mama used to guide your ghost through the halls. The mourners come,
and I portion out myself to the hungry crowd, slowly
being blinded by the candles of pity they hold for a daughter without a light.
When your father dies, say the West,
he carries your innocence into a sunset sky.
Your stories are still smeared on my tongue, still seared
beneath my lids, still soaked into the tissue of me. In my mind,
the colour of your voice is gentle, like
an apology. Firm, like a goodbye. And hopeful, like
until we meet again.
When your father dies, say the South, he comes back as you.
May you have the courage to honour him.
(Written in the style of “Shifting the Sun” by Diana Der-Hovanessian.)

Glossary:
Dhikr: an Islamic form of prayer
Adhan: the Islamic call to prayer
Janazah: the Islamic funeral prayer



In Absentia

Sometimes I wonder
if I am broken enough.
when they whisper of grief
I do not think of that
clogging of the throat.
That hollowing, caving,
yielding of the heart. That
holding of space, the crater
in the midst of lush fields.
I think of my cat, his
white and orange fur
soft as an unbroken
promise. In its folds, the
wound that curled in like
a shadow and the long drive
to the vet's office, where
anguish met us with open arms.
I did not cry when
my grandmother died, that
lovely woman that looked
for her youth in my eyes.
I watched my mother's tears
drown her lungs and nudged
at my own. I wondered where
the line was, how much love
it would take, before grief 
chose to show itself.

About the author:

Fatima Abdullahi is a Muslim writer and photographer. She writes literary and speculative fiction and poetry. She was the runner-up in the 2023 Dreamfoundry Emerging Writers Contest and the 2nd runner-up in the 2023 Valiant Scribe Poetry Competition. She has also been published in Dark Matter Magazine, Augur Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Lunaris Review, The Decolonial Passage, Libretto Magazine, The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Connect with her on Twitter @TheSolitary___ 

Feature image by Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash