In my dream,
unknown fingers tugged at my teeth,
then I heard, the clamor of their fall,
tooth by tooth.
Old Arab wisdom says
that teeth falling out in a dream means death:
if only your front teeth fall out,
you will be rendered, unable to speak,
if all fall out, death will befall your kin,
and you will be left behind.
I woke to find my mouth a cave,
I howled but infinity swallowed my scream,
I spoke, but my words were lost in stone,
I told myself I wouldn’t care,
I’d go around, with an empty mouth,
but a full heart.
I left the house, to see my name,
drowning and calling for help.
I gave it my hand, but the wind scolded:
“A new era demands a new name,
where every book’s pages are white,
and our rivers are dyed by our thoughts”.
Revolution is a large shoe,
and yet, our feet are small.
My family float on their backs,
waving, on their way to oblivion.
My father hangs on the peg of absence,
history extinguished in his gold tooth,
smiling, as if life were a joke.
Our laughs fall, the joke sours,
and I set out to write lamentations,
but eloquence leaps
onto fear’s boat,
followed by the blind chicks of meaning.
I set about to say one word,
no, half a word: if only…
If only my father was alive.
But my father continued to die upon his death.
I became a tree at the riverbank,
my roots hacked, my memories blue.
I dreamt that my dreams fell out of my mouth,
and turned to fossils in the riverbed.
The Old Arabs have left,
leaving me neither
language nor interpretations.
Old wars left,
as did others that never happened,
their teeth also fell out,
and they were told:
there’s no bread for you here, nor blood,
the first was eaten, the latter clotted.
This is the world whose sky was lifted,
whose mountains were raised,
whose children revolted for justice.
Look at it,
dragging itself
across bridges built in its head,
its mountains face-down,
its children crumbling, like cork.
Only I remain on the bank,
a tree, cut from a tree.
Untold generations have passed me,
the drawings on the walls of my mouth have risen.
I remember a word from the ancient past,
and I almost utter it…
no… I almost utter a third of it.
Perhaps I never uttered it,
perhaps I only thought it.
The world turns its head,
giant bodies make as to rise,
and my wet name rears its big head.
Since that moment,
thousands of years ago,
I’ve been hearing a long creak,
and the clamor of the world’s teeth falling.
