Bodies

     My mother calls me to tell me about Tuesday nights, how the rain always falls at 8 pm and how the heat of the day escapes through the cracks in the sky. I tell her that I teach myself these days about desert biomes and climates. I tell her how in her desert the night doesn’t blanket the sky like it does here. I tell her that when I am cold, my bones rattle and burn. I think ‘I am a fossil,’ I think ‘my body is or was a continent.’ I tell my mother how fossils have genders. She asks what’s the difference between sex. I teach her about biology. She teaches me about how our people lived without genders until their clothes shrivelled up. In my family, gender is a term that has no meaning, western language is not in their native tongue, so instead, we talk in sentences that roll back onto each other. 

My Mother speaks of تپه حسنلو‎,  she speaks of buried lovers and golden plates. In Iran, our people had more than two genders. In Iran, fossils crossed barriers, crossed rivers until their bodies became something else. In تپه حسنلو fossil were draped in silk until the curves of their bodies became what they weren’t. Fossils were buried with tiles and hair pins, stitched together until western language tore them apart. The west imposed their ideas on us until our land flattened and shrunk. They broke apart our genders until they fell into two. They poisoned our desert until our bones ached and shattered. They poisoned our desert until we poisoned ourselves with their words. 

دو

    I asked my mother what she would have called me if I were a boy, she said that my name existed before my birth. My mother carved my name into the curves that defined my child body. She bathed me in the yellow of it until I became the golden child, the one who shucked pomegranates until my skin cracked and bled onto our floor. My mother said that when I was born, I let out the most guttural cry. Like the cry I let out when I am broken, like how I cry when the heat in our house goes out, and I have to suffocate myself under the weight of a peeling blanket.

When I am older, I play with the consonants of it. I connect a’s with z’s and swap them around until I am no longer who I once was. I shorten my name to one that belonged to my grandfather. I change it back when he dies. When I am drunk, I let out too many secrets. I say things through a tongue of lies. I tell people my name has no gender. I tell them        susanna                is Hebrew for lily. I tell them in Egyptian it means rebirth.

سه

     When my girlfriend says my name, it rolls off her tongue like       honey.    She wraps it around me like a shroud of yellow light. My mother once told me to envision myself in a circle of yellow. She told me that it keeps out the dark. When the lights go out, I say   ‘I am yellow.’        When the lights go out, my girlfriend pours it over me through her arms. When I am with her, I am no longer broken, she soaks me in lavender and whispers warmth into my ears. When I am with her, she sews my ribs back together; she pulls them apart when I can’t breathe. She tells me I am golden. She tells me I was the first person she could ever love. She says I love you not your gender and tucks broken waves behind my ear. 

Before I was with her, I was broken by someone else. Someone who pulled out my lungs and crushed them under her shaking arms. Someone who took my sadness and turned it against me, until it doubled in size. When I was with her, I was susanna. She spat out my name like acid until it burnt holes in my flesh. When I was with her, she took a part of me I could never get back. I took each sentence she gave me and curled up until my bed was soaked with tears. When I was with her, I left my body. My yellow circle became a cage. It compressed my heart until it stopped beating and all my blood leaked through my ears.

چهار  

  When I feel pain, I think mostly of her. I think of how she came to me at a time I needed love the most. I think of how I ignored the tugging in my stomach, how I told myself sometimes what I think is wrong actually isn’t. I think of how I plugged my ears when my friends told me I was blind. I think of how I told them I needed her because I needed someone to hold. 

With her the love was different, it bent me in half until I shattered. My bones are still aching. They wake me up when I dream of her. I learnt that it takes ten years for your bones to regenerate. I learnt that it can take ten years for a body to decompose. I always talk about gender in therapy, but I have never spoken about her. I can’t because when I do, I can feel my throat                aching              . I bite my lips until they crack and bleed. I feel like what I felt like that evening. I can feel my skull hitting her bathroom floor. I feel the air leaving my body until my eyes close and turn blue.

I don’t talk about her because when I open my mouth, I am scared of the secrets. I am scared of the pain. I am scared that I am so trusting. I am scared that I could let it 

                                                                                                                        happen again

پنج

On Sundays my mother reads tarot 

                                                         They tell me my teeth are too                  dark

They tell me my eyes are 

                                                                                                going to rot

I have eyes like a sparrow 

                                                       I weave myself a nest to hide behind 

My mother flips over cards 

                                                                                               I learn that the chariot is my moon 

It spins me around until my stomach is green

                                                                                     It tumbles me until I am a knot of silk. 

شش

      On Sundays, my emotions become redness; it makes my voice crack in two. My mother tells me I am no longer golden. She tells me I made myself too big, and my mouth too swollen. She says I am the chariot, my mind can never stay still. I become her secret. She hides me behind her wall of grief. I say ‘what’s the difference between death and rebirth.’ She says that تولد دوباره is the domain that اهورامزدا can’t enter. 

Rebirth is not in our religion so at night she tucks me beneath my sorrow and whispers   ‘من می خواهم عذرخواهی کنم’ into my ears.

My mother says that اهورامزدا can heal what she calls heartache. She tells me honey can cure my aching throat. She tells me she doesn't understand trauma. She tells me she saw her uncle hanged on TV. She says she lived through a revolution so my sickness will wash away like her tears. She says that when she hears that my brain is broken, she says that when I tell her what that one lover did. 

هفت

          When I was 19, I had a mini-stroke; it splattered my brain until I couldn't move. The doctors said that my brain is too slow to ever graduate college. They tell me I will never live long enough to hold a grandchild in my arms. My mother says she hates me for this. She tells me I will split my girlfriend's life in two. She says I shouldn’t let someone love me, if my love will leave them broken. I cry until I vomit. I tell my mother that I'll be okay. She says she knows I am lying. She says when I lie my sparrow eyes squint up into blackness. She says when I lie my vision burns until I'm green.

I tell her this is not a trauma for me. I tell her I know what real pain is. I tell her that when they cut me open. I tell her that when my body convulses and hits the floor. I tell her I am already broken. I tell her my girlfriend is the only person I could ever love. I tell her that my girlfriend fixed what the doctors couldn’t. She is my yellow when my eyes are shut. She is the lavender that grows in our garden. She is the honey that coats my throat. She is the comfort my mother never gave me. She is the warmth I always seek. When I am angry, I think of her yellow. When I am angry, I say her name until my body stops moving and my tongue turns soft from the heat.