By Aisha Zubair
Edited by Alloe Mak
You were supposed to be my salvation—
But you left me alone with the things that crawl.
I woke at sunrise, stayed past midnight,
Fingers trembling, whispering, begging the shadows.
You said you are a child. Remain childlike.
So, I stayed small, ignoring the ache in my legs.
I can’t remember what he looked like—every picture is different—a figure, evil and uncanny.
But you whispered from the corners, echos running through the house, saying It is not my fault.
The world is evil, you said, and I brought it into our home.
I took my blankets and crawled under the bed, searching for him in sleep.
But the dust whispered and the floorboards creaked—
You made him go away
You erased him from existence.
You looked at me with disgust when I turned twelve,
The clocks chimed and my blood ran down the stairs.
Why would you bite me and not expect me to bleed?
You answered, eyes burning, saying I was ashamed to be alive, ashamed of my humanness.
I hid in high school bathrooms; the walls pulsing, I smoked his ashes hoping to engrave the smell in me; the smoke curled around my ankles like hands, like mouths.
I begged you again, begged the ceiling, the fan, the lights.
You gave me a knife, its edge gleaming like teeth.
I licked it, pretending it was love, pretending it would help me remember.
But it sliced my tongue, my lips, until I was red and raw,
And still, you didn’t show your face, not for years.
I tried to remake him, rebuild him, rebirth.
An angel, you said, but his wings were wrong,
Feathers bent, bones cracked.
He laughed, but his laugh was a jagged thing,
Like glass breaking in the cold.
He brushed my hair with fingers too sharp, too slow.
I looked at this abomination, this body, this mind.
It was wrong, so wrong, that’s what you get for playing God you chimed at the wrong times.
I tried to feed it bits of him, so that he could take true form,
I kept him to myself.
In a room with no windows, no light, no guests.
He could not see the light, yet in his blindness, he saw too much.
I saw his eyes clouding, his hands trembling,
His wings turned to dust.
And I realized I was loving something hollow,
Something that fed off the boy I buried.
He fell apart, piece by piece.
His feathers rotted, his halo dimmed,
And I held him, but he crumbled in my arms.
I dreamed of him watching me with eyes he no longer had,
Dreamed of his fingers tracing the walls as he searched for me,
But all I smelled was death—
Rotten flowers, wet soil, the air thick with it.
In his final moments, I clung to his shell,
Jealous of the world that still held him,
Jealous of the ground that would swallow him whole.
When you pried me off, I looked at my hands,
And they were covered in ash,
The smell of him burning in my skin.
You’re right, I say, I’m sorry for trying to be a God.
But still, I mourned it—whatever it was—watching as it consumed what I loved.
In that devouring, I almost believed it became him,
Though I couldn’t tell where he ended and it began.
It was supposed to stay this time. Why didn’t it stay with me? I asked you.
You look at me and laughed your cruel laughter as your hands circle and play around the sun.
You two were damned from the beginning, not worthy of my divinity.