learning about the syntax, the basic units of affection
pitch perfect from the beginning of beginnings
you are one of my root languages
we adhere to a shared topography
learning about shadows and silhouettes from you
the inner light they radiate; the aura of things blended in darkness
non-sequestered from good: a vocabulary esoteric but also mainstream
calling you “Dad” is a populist thing — how funny it is, how ironic, that words
can marginalise, limit and go beyond the very anatomy of their morphologies…
you are Dad-fixed, a biological marker, a genetic code that won’t be adverbed away,
a phenotype inheritance; a structural will you weaved subconsciously into my bones and I
did so too…we are like a chess board incomplete with each other…
and maybe the theatre of sky and the amphitheatre of the soil cannot encompass you
because I cannot always encompass you; we are both a wind we breathed and exhaled,
inhaled again like a mountain ridge path. I know that what we had is irreplaceable because it is
a womb participation; you did carry me for nine months by constantly caring about Mom.
and this ribcage will have a bird that sings; a song so plainly beautiful, for it is you and me
Father and Daughter always and I don’t think a bird like that will stop singing, anytime soon
we will have our oceans and our swimming in them, we will have our sunset afternoons, drinking
tea in them and knowing that warmth is always catalysed by warm company. As you once spoke:
” A candle doesn’t lose its fire by lighting up another.”
and I wonder which constellations you have lit up, lightened up and now also light in
this inward astronomical that you also know me in, lit up in me with paternal, pure, parental
love. I know how to love also from you. Love is a dedication. Love is both the spine, tail and the brain
with the heart; I cannot repay you for such vowels…
— I love you Abbu
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The companion piece with Mari Sanchez Cayuso’s “Consonants“. Both are poems grieving our Fathers and showing our love to them. My Abbu passed away on the 24th, February, 2015 at around 5.00-5.30pm. I miss him every single day. I love you Abbu very much. May Allah Almighty always make you happy.
