Seraphic Loathing

Islam Nashrif

The wind always seems to interrogate me,

Which is why I detest it.

Nature always seems to make me pay my dues

Which is why I fear it. And the loathing?

A bounty for not sparing me in this lifetime

An inducement for collecting further bleak karma

Morphing more and more into cancer…

While the anomalies call to be doused with gasoline.

 

I loathe more than ever what abounds,

Reckless judgments, denigrating assumptions,

Time constraints, proud indifferences,

Sneaky slanders, eternal grudges,

Gratuitous wickedness, unsought obligations

And malevolent meddling, because my clock is ticking.

 

But what I loathe the most is being born a <i>Woman</i>.

Regardless of the century assigned to the vessel.

 

Saltwater runs down my face

Plated against the cold glass…

This hatred of being born a woman,

Since 1997, perhaps even before that,

While I swam in my mother’s womb,

Has defaced me into an embittered entity.

 

Rancor magnified over the days

In a widowed house of love

Where laughter got lost

To the unborn child

A small cemetery in latency

Inhabited by the undead, the unimportant

Who glance at each other with utter scorn.

 

Memories etched haphazardly

In dust portraits;

Physical death is nothing

If it comes quickly and discreetly

But what an infamous torture

This wandering of the soul!

I would rather obliterate the fetus

than prolong its misery

For I wouldn’t risk it being born a woman.

 

(Written in 2021)