My soul aches for somewhere I’m not sure even exists.
One where my soul is satisfied
And my breathing syncs with the rush of the rivers,
Those portals to deeper things.

Mother
I grew up.
You cannot carry me anymore.
My worries are more than you can console
And my list of dreams are taller than me.
I grew so much
That I’m embarrassed now
To knock your room’s door at night
to cry.

The green translucent window from which I view the world is also my prison, confining me to a rather nauseating scene. The limits of my line of sight extend to families walking their dogs, children riding their bikes, or the occasional bee passing by my cage. I’ve never seen past this plastic cell. I’m not exactly keen on doing so either. I’ve seen what happens to our kind once we reach the open air. Dropping dead before we can utter a syllable of goodbye. Why? I sometimes scream at the universe. Why grant us the ability to rise yet not allow us to soar?

I know my time is coming soon. I can almost see the ungreenified sky when the top of my cage is pulled off. It’s okay. I’ve accepted it. I hear my brethren around me, foolishly excited to soon explore this maliciously human world. I wish I could warn them. I wish I could save them. But I lack the voice, and I am far too weak.

The “bubble wand” used to murder my ancestors is pulled up again. I watch, over and over, as my family falls limp before my eyes. I see. I see it all. And it pains me so. It strikes me deep in my very core. I’ve tried so, so hard to forget. But memory does have an uncanny habit of tapping the barrel of its gun to the inside of my skull, demanding me to remember. Remember my insignificance–simply a meaningless mass of liquid in a larger world.

My end gets closer by the second. The killing machine comes in again and goes out again. It brushes past, and I wish I could do something, anything. But all I can do is watch. And I see. I see it all.
My time has come to a close. The flimsy plastic stretches me uncomfortably thin across it. I wish I could stop, but I keep watching. I see, I see it all, and it overwhelms me.
Air pushes me from behind, inflating me into a still-living corpse. I watch. I prepare. Listen to excited chatter give way to panic as one by one we are picked away.

So I wait.
And I keep waiting.

Mother of the Sky carries me over rooftops and treetops, past beach and the ocean. I see it all, what my brothers and sisters could not, ascending higher and higher, living still.

I stare at the sunset for my brothers and sisters, sunlight playing yellow and orange hues on my surface.

I see.
I see it all.

I look to the fluffy pink sky and cry out with pain, again and again:
Why allow me to soar when all I knew was how to fall?

I’m not afraid of death. I mean, no one is. In a perfect world, why would you be? The city lights never flicker, and the roads are always smooth. As I pass a construction site, I see someone slice open their hand on a rusty bolt and laugh. Like I said earlier, death isn’t an issue here.

My sneakers smack concrete as I walk up the stairwell of my apartment building. As if muscle memory, I go through the motions. Wave hello to my perfect neighbor Celine, walking her dog John, who never barks. Grab the package outside my door, turn key in lock and throw it inside. I step inside myself, and the putrid stench hits me almost instantly. I raise my colorless hand to my perfectly angled nose and frown. This part doesn’t usually happen. I follow the smell to my bathroom and push open the door. On the wall, written in bright red lipstick, “You are not living.”

My lower lip trembles, and I sprint down the steps, cut out the back door. As soon as I step outside, I trip on a crack in the sidewalk. That’s not right. It’s not—utopia lasts forever, right? I hear a shrill scream coming from the construction site I’d passed earlier. The worker who’d cut his hand sprints down the road bleeding—bleeding red?—from his right palm.

It is nature, we had forgotten, for all good things to end. More terrified faces falling over each other. Watching as realization overcomes the fear.

Who am I? Hell, I don’t even know what I look like.

The streetlight flickers.
I flicker back.

A life made of cards
One, two touches and it’s over
Such is perfection.

I am a being
Devoid of light
156 long months
following someone
Who has everything
I do not.

I’m a constant silhouette.
A teller of time
Or a follower of it.

Chained like Atlas
Carrying the dead weight
Of what she has left behind.

I am a void
For screaming into
And an abyss
For falling.

I am an emptiness.
A black mass
Of nothingness.
There is no love in what I do.
No thrill,
And so I do not know what to think
For where there are no shadows
How far would she sink?

I am out tonight putting together fragments of myself
In an effort to attain you, perfection.

I know that you are beautiful
And neat,
And pure,
All these things I am not.

Although lies I am fed
Convince me otherwise.

All things are created and destined to be broken someday.
Beautify the breakage.
Hold it close.
Love it.
And when it is time-

I am out tonight with a flame
Covering burn marks
Piecing myself together.

Leaving you behind.

Your eyes widen.
“Five times a day?!”
It’s not like I haven’t heard this before.
Yes, I tell you.
But what I don’t say is that where I’m from, we pray six.
Fajr, Zuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha, and
Janazeh.