S.M. Badawi

After Cardiac Arrest

It’s not hard to have faith 

on summer evenings, 

to gaze into the hot mouth 

of dusk & believe 

in the inventor of light.

I’ve never felt closer to God 

than on a humid Florida night, 

skin humming with sweat, 

wondering who was out there 

among the hiss & croak, 

imagining the slither of belly on grass, 

the scrape of wing on wing. 

One sunset I saw an alligator 

crawl from a canal to taste 

the whiteness of an egret. 

The bird had been watching the horizon. 

That same horizon let me believe in

possibility, too, as if the sky 

could be its own god, 

vast & filled with emptiness. 

But then midnight came & with it 

loneliness, so fierce 

that my heart tore silently, wistfully, 

and I hoped there was a God, 

one who would sew it back together 

carefully, tenderly. 

Field Notes on the Temporary State of Longing

How I followed a red balloon to the tree of language
Grasped the root of longing, wrist bound & captive

How I searched for a crack between pulse and vowel
A space neither cloud nor clay

How you asked “Until when?”
Until the nest, until red rust

Until the tree began to buck
Each fruit & leaf & layer of bark 

How you called this wintering
In late November the flood & its gathering unroot

How your mouth said you were tired
Even as your hands filled with soil

How the ax, flecks of wood on its steeliest parts
How seeds began to scatter

The ground filled with luster, thickened with want
How I could hear nothing but the whoosh of the tree’s limbs

How they strained against the harness of the earth 
Magnet to something unseen

Religious Experience at Mayaro Beach

Under a coconut tree I watch the ocean meet land. Each wave opens its mouth to gulp sand and spit it back out. When the Spaniards came to convert, their prayers white noise between each wave, all attempted baptisms were a drowning. In this context the saddest word isn’t drowning but prayers. I am wary of beautiful waters. This blue that brought Europeans. To focus on the present is akin to admiring the mane of a white horse from a distance only to discover the horse’s disfigured body up close. I try hard to separate the blue from what it carried, to be the tourist I’m supposed to be. Brochures advertise that this is an excellent place for kayaking and birdwatching. I want to call the Ministry of Tourism to ask where is the best place for grief watching. I close my eyes only to discover it was right behind my eyelids all along. How clearly I see when the light is blocked. In semi-darkness I remember how water is mentioned 32 times in the Quran, how God’s throne sits somewhere upon a body of water. But the distance between the highest heaven and the world is five hundred years. That is to say, the distance between prayer and God is five hundred years. That is to say nothing and let the clouds measure the distance between my tears and the sea.

Note: The line “distance between the highest heaven and the world is five hundred years” is attributed to Abdullah Ibn Masud, companion to the prophet and communicator of hadith.