By: Fatima Malik
Cognitive dissonance
They say/ The funeral procession was enormous/ In a religion where how well you do is directly proportional to the number of people putting in a good word for you/ At the time of departure/ That is something/ I guess/ I wouldn’t know/ I wasn’t there/ Three older brothers too old to be pallbearers/ Their sons doing their duty/ And ours/ Since girls don’t go to graveyards/ You see/ Down the pockmarked street they took you/ Past the manicured graveyard for the fancier gated community/ Beyond the newly built gas station/ And the shuttered restaurant/ The hardware store you frequented/ All markers you pointed out on my yearly visits to you/ Out to the new graveyard with only a handful of denizens/ Covered the fresh earth/ With blood red/ Roses/ In the days since/ I visited every day/ The petals wilted and drying/ As I stood there trying/ To reconcile/ Perception with reality/ That wasn’t my lionhearted father lying underneath that earth/ A man so alive I measured life by the units of his momentum/ That must be someone else/ A stranger/ Close my eyes/ I see/ My father is at his morning walk/ My father is at work swiveling in his chair/ My father is at the masjid/ My father is on the roof fixing the water tank/ My father is in his garden among his flowers/
Seeing the Body
My sister Hafsa has a photo on her phone She took this photo for us
the four daughters who weren’t there They weren’t there when Say it
She thought maybe we will want to see Maybe we will want to say
Goodbye There are many things I want I want him back I want
to hear his voice The way he said Maza aaya na Uju? I want him to
tell people My eldest daughter She is the smartest This photo
My sister thought maybe we will want to see I for one do not want
to see My father is alive in my head He is Javed the first name on my
child lips He is eternal Tell me how this photo will help I think
maybe it is meant to help with moving forward not moving on The
only way past grief is through it I think my sister Rumesa saw it
I don’t think I’m going to I like to think of my father alive He was
so alive I used to think he would live forever I used to hold his hand in mine
Palm upturned Wonder at the pink and pulse of his thenar and hypothenar
eminence On the black of my retinas he is always in motion Of no
use to me is his lifeless image When I picture my father I don’t
want to picture a body
Fatima Malik (she/her) is a fundraiser and poet with work published in dreams walking, perhappened mag, Golden Walkman Magazine, seiren, and the winnow. She is currently working on her first full-length collection of poems, Elegies Burnished by Memory Flame, an excavation of grief after her father’s sudden death. She has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College and a joint MA in Journalism and Near Eastern Studies from New York University. While she currently lives in New York City, her heart is forever in Lahore.
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