Senegal River
Author: Bella Tudisco (itudiscosadacca@middlebury.edu)
As he goes to light his cigarette I tell him Allah doesn’t want him to,
hoping his lighter will fail like it usually does the first try,
He looks up to the sky as his cigarette starts burning.
I guess god doesn’t care if he kills himself.
He told me god is the only thing he fears.
I told him I am not afraid.
He said that’s a dangerous thing to say.
He asked me when I stopped believing.
I said I stopped believing in god, when god stopped believing that what I cried myself to sleep for was worth listening to,
that the lives of those I loved were worth continuing.
I am my own god.
He said that could be, that god lies in our bones and flesh
God is me.
He kisses me in the doorway
I linger on his lips hoping the cockroach on his bed will make its way off,
when I hear it rustle in the corner
I let my body fall.
It’s like a blackout upon impact
These nights become hazy
I can block out the pain, the doubts
but I can’t quite keep my eyes closed
I watch a mouse tightrope across the curtain in his window frame,
the window his mother calls his name from,
the window through which she catches a glimpse of my bare white body,
I cannot hide within his shadow
but am consumed by the darkness it brings me.
At least it hides the tears.
As the day’s first call to prayer begins the hum of mosquitos adds a snare to the mosque’s music
I swat with one hand while he presses the other above my head.
There is something about the voice that echoes from the mosque at 5am that can make even an atheist feel god in their eardrums, heart-drums.
I’ve started to question whether I’m not afraid.
He takes me while the mosque next door is reminding him “Allah Akbar”
“God is the greatest.”
We wait for the neighborhood to return from praying, or until he’s gotten what he wanted
before he’ll bring me home.
I always hate myself after.
He told me he will ask for forgiveness in the morning.
He puts his gris-gris back around his waist, a leather belt of divine protection
that he makes sure to remove before any part of him enters me.
He asks me to buy him cigarettes.
I asked him if asking for forgiveness with the intention of fucking the next night took away from his request.
He told me earth is not meant to be a paradise,
We are not meant to feel pleasure,
but we are imperfect,
we seek to create little pieces of heaven in our bedsheets
because life is too hard to abstain from the teasers of paradise.
I think his heaven feels differently than mine.
He said he thinks god must be a women for how easily she forgives.
As birds fly over the Senegal river you can see the fish jumping for their lives,
hoping by dancing in and out of the water they will escape the beaks of those above them.
For them, being lifted to the sky is their hell.
In their world, the moment they break the waters surface,
catch a breath of the air we breathe,
is a moment closer to their death.
Perhaps for them, the closer they get to the depths of the river bottom,
ocean bottom,
is the closer they get to feeling heaven.
It was the closest I’ve felt to heaven,
the darkest depths of myself.