Rosary Beads

I have a Tasbeeh in my possession. It has 100 big round wooden beads. Occasionally I use them to do my chants. I do the Dhikr exactly as I was taught when I was a child. I go through the chain repeating the chants 33 times. I do not do them less or more. I do not question the logic behind it. I am just glad that I have something to do during the times I cannot recognise myself. During the times I stand failed in my own rationality. During the times when it is only the air I breathe that has any meaning. The Tasbeeh I have, the one I carry along everywhere with my migraine and anxiety medicines, belonged to my father. It belonged to my father during that period in my life when I could love him and before I lost that ability. Before I stopped needing his hugs to calm to me down after a bad math test paper. Before I learned that love entails hate and pain. Before he turned into someone else under the weight of his failed marriage and ambitions. I constantly play spot-the-simila...

The sleeping pill bottle on my night stand throbs loud and then louder  Stewing in its failure,  the proud produce of a successful industry. I lie on the bed, eyes closed feeling for that girl in the movie  She loved being fucked by her father Her daddy cried when she committed suicide. I saw the Ramadan food bazaar He was alone, an old man Something else in place of his nose, or nothing The terminal cancer board hung over him. I took deep breaths till I am in that hotel room There I get up from my peaceful sleep The muezzin from the Blue mosque, calling the faithful to prayer. The gay muezzin from that Malayalam classic He died in a government district hospital, opposite the Top Notch bakery  I buy sweet buns and cream cakes from there. I have been there as a 6-year-old, product of a brittle marriage I weep with my brother, over our parents we grew up to dislike. Hungry, I get up and make an omelette ...