Photo credit: Hakim El Haj
Episiotomy
“When you were born, your mother had no anesthesia”
By Ehrlich Ross
Extreme pain screeching through my spine as I push ankles
Hoisted up by the cold metal stirrup I lay supine and exposed I play
Russian roulette with death while my insides churning
Linear streaks lines my over stretched belly
I shout as I feel the sharp blade of the scissor
Cutting the skin of a supposed house of pleasure but is now
Housing agony what did I do to deserve this pain
Exiting here comes a head a shoulder a pair of arms a body and
Soul I kept and cradled inside me
To feel you warm in my arms as your cry
Echoes in this bleach smelling room with white tiles that for most
People is a place of beginnings or an end of life
Heaven must be missing an angel now for here it comes
Arrived and here nourished from my bosom
None of the pain matters anymore the blood the cut the
Incision the severed placenta my now
Empty womb an atrium for your genesis
oh how wonderful my body is
Enveloped by a woolen blanket my baby sleeps and coos as I sit
Remembering my plight during labour I am now afloat in mid-air dreaming
I am once again a girl running on fields of coconut trees
Catching dragonflies crossing rivers barefoot collecting rocks & seeking
Hidden treasures your grandmother forbid me from doing
Such silly things she calls my name from afar I ran towards her
Oblivious of how much trouble I will get for these dirty clothes but
Nothing really matters I am with overflowing joy
and that’s exactly what I feel right now
Photo credit: Hakim El Haj
Broken Ghazal: Displaced
By Ehrlich Ross
He heard it when the doctor said it’s a bad fracture; it needs surgery – the tibia
comminuted and fibula displaced.
With broken bones and broken English, he tried to ask “what communutted?! not good?!
deespleysd?!”
In the hospital bed, his foot hangs limply from a swollen leg. Pedal pulse is palpable- so is
his fear.
He tilted his body to the side and felt bones rubbing. Knowing how it feels makes it easier
to understand the meaning – displaced.
Two months and alone in a foreign country. He drives around town delivering food to
mouths with tongues pronouncing unfamiliar words.
Then the headlights, the hot concrete, and the heavy bike on his leg.
Every night he empties his pockets filled with dreams and tucks it under his pillow.
Maybe in sleep life is easier and dreams are lived and not something placed in pockets to
help get through the day.
Maybe in a dream, he did get an accident and got away with only a bruise. Maybe
in a dream, he is not worried if he can still be able to walk and won’t be displaced
from his job. Maybe in his dream, he is not afraid to be sent home. That home is not a
graveyard. Walls not pockmarked by bullets and there were no people displaced
by war. Start to question. What is a broken leg when there are children with cracked
skulls?
Why complain when there are people with dreams robbed and displaced
homes? If a home does exist where could it be? Some say here. Some say wherever
not chased by bullets. Some say where my language is not displaced
by another language. Where airplane doesn’t mean- go hide somewhere. And running
doesn’t mean – you are about to die. I wonder what will Elias think if I say – you’ll be
discharged home in five days.
What is home for him? If it were a refuge, will it be his bed? If it were a place with love,
Where is his family? If it were a place, could it be somewhere not distant and displaced?
Maybe home is in the operating room where someone puts him to sleep
but wants him alive, where someone cuts him open just to save his life.
Where pain means he needs a dose of analgesia and doesn’t mean another family member
died. Where nails and metal plates are not used for shrapnels but used to join bones
displaced.
Accidents leave people with broken bones, but war leaves people with broken souls,
dreams, and home. How to chase it with a broken leg? Dreams and home. How to chase it
with a broken soul? When dreams and home are displaced.