Friday, September 11, 2009

The Sweet Days Of Shirin

Shirin,
is as sweet as her name,
recites Rumi and Hafez.
Writes poetry
in the silence of a room no one can enter.
The ink spills from her fingers,
big black drops 
that help her to breathe.

They have closed her University this month.
The men with the guns
and dark eyes,
who fight for a God
they secretly fear,
but say still they love more 
than anything.

During the day she covers her hair,
her shoulders,
her long legs,
her sins
beneath a chador.

On the streets of Tehran
she is just a face
in a sea of faces.

She walks by the gate of her University today,
peers through the window of her old classroom.
Her teacher sits inside
on a small yellow chair,
shedding tears for the beautiful voices 
she is beginning to forget.
Shirin feels the end of a long gun dig inside her back.
Move along
there is nothing to see here.
This time they are right.
There is nothing.

She makes a quick stop at the corner.
Meets with Mahtab,
who places a small bag in her hand.
This goes unnoticed
within the bustling noise of the bizarre,
the cracking of pistachios,
the loud voices of tired men-
tired even of their own oppression.

Later that night she arrives at her cousin’s house.
His parents in the country side for the weekend.
Within the doors she hears silence.
She follows the long hallway,
down the stairs,
through the basement doors.

She hears music 
alive like a beating heart,
her chador comes off,
she breathes again.
Someone places a glass of whiskey in her hands.
She is kissed by all,
even men with dark eyes.
Instead of guns,
they hold her hand as they enter another world.
She carries two white pills to the tip of her tongue,
as she recites a prayer silently.
This is a different kind of poetry.
She empties the rest of the freedom pills in a tray, 
glasses usually filled with tea,
now tipped over with dark fluids that burns when it goes down.
She passes the tray around,
the way her mother taught her to-
polite,
respectful,
quietly, 
elders first.

She makes sure to skip no one.

1 comment:

  1. OHHH MYYY GODDD SHIDEH...that was AMAZING! You can make words dance!

    ReplyDelete