Four Poems

Four Poems

POETRY

Four Poems

Maitha AlSuwaidi

The Sun

When you describe me;
Do not compare me to a flower.
Do not compare me to the moon. 
Do not compare me to a melody. 
Think of me as the big, bright sun. 
For flowers wither,
The moon relies on the brightness of the sun to shine,
Melodies grow repetitive and boring. 
But the sun,
It is the reason you wake up in the morning. 
It the reason the flowers in the balcony of your tiny apartment back in your New York blossom. 
It is the reason the moon shines on your restless composure when you’re up all night missing me, every single night 
It is the reason you wrote all those songs about me, each morning a new melody. 
And if I, the sun, ever explode from the agony you’ve been feeding me 
I will take all source of life along with me,
Including yours. 
So, think of me as the big, bright sun.

 

شكراً ماما

:إلى أمي الحبيبة

أريد أن أهديكِ كل البلاغة في هذه الدنيا لأشفيَ كل الآلام التي استعرتِها من الدنيا

أريد أن أقدّم لك تشبيهاتَ نزارِ وكلمات كاظم

أريد أن أهديك كلماتي الباهتة هذه.

أقبلي مني المحبة

اقبلي مني المحبةَ في ليالي السهر والسمر

لإنني لا أستطيع أن أقدم لك الكثيرَ عدا الأحضان والكلمات

.فاقبليهم مني 

The Ultimate Guide to Toxicity 

Man,
Man up.
Man up; vulnerability is not an option, and neither is crying
In the case of the existence of tears, it should be the tears of the girl you lured to love you unconditionally, never yours
Man-age to get the upper hand, at all costs
Man-age to push her to her limits just for you to catch her before she falls
Man-date your inferiors, in other words, the females in your family that love you unconditionally
Man-euver your way to as many hearts as you can before you decide to settle down. The more, the man-lier
Man-ifest your faux affection when she abides to your demands and deprive her of it when she misbehaves
Man-ducate her resistance like you will man-ducate that salmon you will force her to cook for you. It may taste fishy and stinky, but you will enjoy eating every single bit of it. You will, nevertheless, remind her everyday of how stinky it tasted

Man-ipulate
Man-ipulate her like a subject in one of your scrutinizing studies
A dependent variable
A lab rat
A case study
An object to be acquired
And when the treatment fails to produce the result you hypothesized
When the lab rat gets sick and dies
When the case study fails
When the human you objectify becomes an object
When the wo-man you deep-down loved becomes nothing but your shadow
When she becomes nothing but the remnants of the whole person she was before you
Tuck in your toxic masculinity in the inner pocket of your expensive suit
And walk into a dark room to silently kill your shadow
And then, man-ipulate the next wo-man
Man up.

 

A Heaving Chest

To get used to fear is to feel heavy
To feel heavy is to drag your heart with a thin rope behind you as you trail by time’s tail
To feel heavy is to sob your eyeballs out when you realize your mother no longer is your best friend

To feel heavy
Is to feel insane
Even when you’re steady
Even when you’re driving in the right lane
It is to be willing to jump into the next person’s shoes as long as they are not yours
It is to blame

Blame

Your father
Your childhood best friend
That one harsh high school teacher
The car accident you got into last year
The one person you thought would never leave

To feel heavy is to never blame yourself
When maybe you should.

 

Maitha AlSuwaidi is a student at NYU Abu Dhabi. She is a writer, a poet, and a performance artist. Maitha hopes to combine her interests in politics and sociology with her practice of creative writing. She will be appearing at the 2019 Hekayah Festival at NYU Abu Dhabi this week.

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