Baba Taught Me How To Read Constellations
Written by Amr Abdalla
Illustration by Tara Lynch
my baba has a heart bigger than the chest that holds it/his chest would burst open when he spoke of his mother/the grooves on her face, the raspiness in her voice, the fiery henna in her hair/the way poetry creaked in the floorboards and how they matched her heartbeat/ a language once forgotten, with a naivety rediscovered, standing before me was a boy with fists turning white grabbing the hems of his mother’s توب.
my baba has a heart bigger than the chest that holds it/he enchanted symphonies in your name; he told me i was your child/ he sat me on ur lap, he taught me to read your constellations/how i could trace them and how each of them meant something different/ when i was young, i used to look for you in the night sky; when i was young i prayed our constellations were exactly the same
my baba has a heart bigger than the chest that holds it /the sutures on his chest wept when you left us/his hair has turnt to ash, he averted his gaze from the sky, disillusioned by the cruelty of Earth
my baba has a heart bigger than the chest that holds it/you see, when his heart failed him, he drowned in his words/ they bubble and ooze out of his pores, they poured into rivers of love with no place to end.
his patience unendurable
his thirst unquenchable
(i’m scared to be like my father; with every act i keep you in my mind. somewhere between my urgency and grief lies a boy looking for you in the night sky, hoping to return with a language to help his father breathe)
