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Solace
by Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad The hum of two verses, in Arabic, broke from a dream when I opened my eyes I only knew scriptures in English until that morning when I remembered the story of the Messenger hauled by an anchor of sorrow, a suffering that simmered in his expulsion from tribesmen and normalcy. A rope, tied and twisted, perched on the orphan’s back. On the path of prophecy, a divinity revealed, grief still circled him, but did I not expand your breast, He asked, removed you from burden, raised you in rank, He wrote in His letter called Solace For indeed, with hardship will be ease Indeed, with hardship will be ease because God knew even His favorite needed persuasion, repeated the affection of a tireless counselor. Those lines now, fourteen hundred years later, wafting dawn-soaked air before I knew my own hardship, the enemy shroud, opaque curtains hung in folds around each organ, and what about my breast, never even selected, how far can it expand before it bursts like a balloon spilling the nothing inside of it. |
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