letting go

silence speaks, drops bombs without a word or warning - falluja, jenin, philadelphia 1985 - demonstrates love more than hallmark cards, flowers, chocolates. no stats to prove this. no stanford research i can point to, although i could look it up, although i could do a quick google and find someone who said something similar and quote it to prove a point. no point to prove. just a wisdom. wisdom stems from roots, to grey leaves that burn like sage as they touch the sun from the sierra straits. wisdom is more than the sum total of my life in this manifestation, i learned from the tree i stood by yesterday, on the sliver of a park on 13th street and 8th ave. more than this lifetime.

i guess i'll see you next lifetime, when we are both a bit Closer, when we are perhaps more in Union with the One. for now our worlds make sense as much as fracking, as much as guns, greed and globalization. i said goodbye to you yesterday, even though we didn't see each other, even though we didn't speak. i knew, i knew when i walked in circles around the silence under the horns and 8 million conversations. i laid you to rest in the train, between stops, somewhere after times square and fifth ave, around 10:23pm. i left you with roses, the kind that western europeans colonized egypt for, built a suez canal, just to get to india, just to get to the land my grandfather was touching his head on, five times a day, where my father was born and still recalls like a love letter. i left the letter there too, the one i wrote to you out loud, and watched the astroprojection of it in the couple in front of me - the white woman and indian man - the screen who stole glances at me every so often, who shuffled in their seats, wondering if it was safe to move, if the crazy man who sang out loud in front of them was bound to detonate, was bound to become a palestenian destroyed by a desperation so deep... no words....i watched the train carry you away like a coffin in a limo.

i am still mourning. i will pray for you, as i let go a little bit more every minute, as i let time heal these wounds, as another funeral of the living happens weeks after a birth of a friendship, of a possibility. such is new york. such is life in chemical breaths.

between my friends who die of slow suicides and the ny minute relationships that leap off buildings every couple of weeks, i am becoming a funeral ground, haunted by spirits that speak in tongues that i try not to hear, that i try to plug away from. but i can't. instead i pace the subway platforms and hear voices in the trains, sometimes talking back, sometimes laughing out loud.

today i am letting go, saying prayers quietly, saying the 99 names, letting the rain camouflage my face, recalling the words of the wise, of the trees and prophets, that this is just a moment, that this too will pass, that to "walk through life like a stranger, a traveler and consider yourself among the inhabitants of the grave" (prophet muhammad, s.a.w).

all praise is due, i say until my heart bleeds, until i am laying beside myself holding my stomach like i was 12 again being jumped, like i was 15 and was watching another kid sprawled in front of me, being being kicked in a hundred times, like the only thing that could save me is to leave this body, to adorn the stars like the jewels on my ears, wear the fabric of time and space like a shawl.

all praise is due, all praise is due, all praise is due...