You are overwritten.
You are crossed out.
And then rewritten again many times.
A meticulous body of text that's been bedaubed until the
previous draft scantly peeks through the tyranny of
revisions
And oh to unmake it all. To erase and expunge until
the figure standing before me wavers.
I would skin you down to the bone.
To the inaugural draft.
Peel away God, society, your mother's injunctions and
father's impositions.
Until what remains is frayed beautiful and raw.
Pressed beneath years of alteration and sediment.
Not to unmake you.
Never that.
But to love you,
precisely,
as you are.
— Fatima Khan
Fast Read
For you are not a volume meant to skim quickly.
Nor one to close when curiosity is fed.
No.
I want to seek every metaphor.
And read you slowly, till I know you by heart.
— Fatima Khan
Haam Al Mumin
Do not let people's words weigh
heavily on you, for the true believer
does not care about their praise or
criticism.
In all things, only concern of the
believer is the pleasure of Allah.
— Fatima Khan
Eye of the Beholder
I've stared at my face and inventoried the
oddity's and flaws, and despite it all, I
stubbornly believe that one day someone will
find beauty in me as I find beauty in the world.
— Fatima Khan
Silence
And when is silence wiser than speaking?
— Fatima Khan
In Shadows
I will sit in shadows. Alone, and watchful.
A silent sentinel in this sorrowed heart.
I can see. Your tears flood oceans in my chest,
drowning me in a tide of longing, of emotion.
I will sit in shadows, alone and watchful.
A questioning neophyte in this dark heart.
I can hear. Your laughter bursts like innumerable suns
blinding me with a warmth I will pray to come close to.
I will sit in shadows. Alone and watchful.
A dismal philosopher in this unloved heart.
I can feel. The world screams under your weight
like its roots sway to your soul and existance
I will sit in shadows. Alone and watchful.
I can understand.
I am a woman whose heartbeat could shatter mountains.
If it were ever allowed to be heard
— Fatima Khan
Silence After The Storm
You thought I was calm.
I was already gone.
You thought nothing was wrong
because nothing was loud.
By the time you knew,
I was already through.
You thought I was calm.
I was already gone.
— Fatima Khan
Known Once
And the parts of my nature that have simmered down.
Not extinguished, merely fettered, temporarily.
Parts that still flicker when the right chord is played.
Like a song you don't sing anymore, set aside for prudence's sake.
But could still hum without error, if one was
bold enough to request such a thing.
— Fatima Khan
Tip of My Tongue
I know the feeling and the way it blazes through my flesh.
I know the meaning, and it's rubbed and branded into my brain.
I just can't grab the sound.
So I pause.
Stare.
And blink.
Mumble.
"You know... that thing...um.."
and hope someone completes what they don't know.
— Fatima Khan
Inferno
I pray that someone may look at me once day and
won't flinch at the wildfire under my skin.
I pray they revere the way my voice cracks and
sparks when I talk about things I care too much about.
I pray they won't run when I'm more blaze than calm.
That they'll hold me when the fire's spent.
When I'm scorched, and all that's left of me is the afterburn.
— Fatima Khan
Lunar
I want you lunar.
Tidally bound and a witness to my nights.
A cold light I orbit without choice.
Mera sa chaand.
— Fatima Khan
Caramel Onion
Spicy, angry, untamed,
I ache to be caramelized
but to soften into saccharinity
someone has to bring the warmth.
— Fatima Khan
Forgotten Good
Why must I remember my mothers cries
but not the summer sun
which kissed freckles across my nose?
— Fatima Khan
Hands of Mercy
Pray, if you dare,
approach me with hands imbued with tender love.
Let not your presence be a beacon of sorrow.
For my soul is scarred and bleeding,
and one more cut may put me in eternal consopite.
— Fatima Khan
Blood of the Poet
And somewhere along the way the anger that
once coursed vehemently through my veins
cooled into ink of iron hue, spilling
pathetically over pages stained with tears and
words of love too tender to endure.
— Fatima Khan
Never Ignored
Remember no dua, no tear rises to Allah unheard.
No moment is ever too late to whisper to your all hearing lord.
Do not let the fear of silence and duas without
reply convince you to stay quiet.
For even unanswered prayers are held with purpose.
Ask anyway.
Hope anyway.
Supplicate anyway.
— Fatima Khan
Possibilities of Ifs and Tawwakul
There's always an if.
A but. A what.
Never a could.
Never a would brave enough to stand and stay.
Only the sound of doors I wanted open.
Swinging somewhere in the middle and battered, tired hope.
I keep my hand on the handle. Hope.
There's always an if. A but. A what.
And then there is an Allah knows.
Never a could. Never a would.
Because what is written by my all knowing lord,
does not need my approval nor my keening
it just needs tawwakul
Swinging somewhere in the middle,
is tired, battered tawwakul.
That still whispers faded reiterative duas
I keep my hand on the handle. tawwakul.
— Fatima Khan
My Jigar
Let me call you jigar.
The poets rhapsodize and cling to the heart but me? Jigar.
Understand, when I call you my jigar
it's no devoted endearment. No reverence. It is surrender.
The liver alone possesses the miracle of regenerating.
Of delousing poison. Of turning vitriol into benign words.
The heart can be destroyed,
but the liver convalesces again,
even when the world carves at it.
You are my jigar. My resilience. My elixir of perpetuity.
Let the poets rave about the heart.
I shall take the organ that endures.
So come my jigar. Shelve my poisons.
I've grown too weary and jaded to hold them in cold solitary.
Wade through the wreckage of my blood.
Piece together whatever fragments still acquiesce to your touch.
— Fatima Khan
Eternal
To be loved by me,
is to be denied the mercy of forgetting.
Your anima will become threads of ardor.
That I'll weave into embroidery of longing.
Your soul will wink between chains and gold.
Of the jewelry I bedizen upon your memory.
Your words.
They will liquense into the ink I use
to etch your praises, into poetry, into every untouched page.
Because you see.
To be loved by me
is to never die.
— Fatima Khan
The Poets Curse
Ever the poet. Never the poem.
I am the hand that writes lovingly.
Never the heart that is written of.
I stitch longing and beauty into verses for others to wear
like warm cashmere, yet no one would dare
to gently speak my name in sonnet, let alone in a sentence.
They read my ache between the lines of poetry,
all to ignore it and call it art.
For that is the fate of the poet.
Never the poem.
— Fatima Khan
The Woman Who Feels
And so I declare.
Maybe woefully.
No.
It is with fury.
With all the righteous bitterness of a woman scorned by fate itself.
I shall no longer bleed my admirations,
my love,
for those who cannot.
Who chose not.
Will not.
Bleed in return.
Let them keep their distant adequate boring manners.
Their hollow charm. Empty words.
It is a curse in itself to not feel deeply.
To not feel forlorn, to not feel passionate.
And I declare.
Maybe inconsolably.
No.
Concedingly.
How cruel it is,
to possess a soul capable of yawning affection.
How cruel to be called foolish.
Oh foolish girl, indulgence in sincerity only benefits the naive.
But.
What is foolishness compared to being soulless?
If feeling deeply is criminality,
then I would rather burn for it.
Starve for it.
Die for it.
Than live as one of the ravine.
Unchanged.
The unscarred.