When you're in Labrador

By Ahmad Danny Ramadan

My therapist tells me I never learned how to receive love
as a child because my mother abandoned me and my father
could tell I like dick and my last break-
up left me unable to trust men which seems
to be a wise decision but dude
why every time you bring me coffee in bed on school days do I feel gravity
tickle your lips with my moustache and your fake
anger when you lose in Monopoly  
makes me giggle and I adore your gay lisp and how
many fucking times you got us to watch
Chicago and how you fan your face when they hang that uh-uh
lady and you refuse to kill spiders but you
gently remove them when I wake you up
at 3am because THERE IS A SPIDER IN THE BATHROOM I love
the poster of RuPaul in our living room and how you
curl your leg up when you kiss me on Robson
Street outside the Shawarma place making a point to that
homophobic cashier
why do I feel like I want to sing a whole new world to you and I don’t
mind that you think I look like Aladdin in fact
I do look like Aladdin in old photos
of myself doing the twink thing and praying
to god someone will love me I believe
you when you say you’ll never leave
me and that’s funny because when you travel
I can hear that little devil in my head telling me you will never
come back but you text me all the time and you
tell me how much you miss me and I fall
asleep on the sofa and dream that you fly
in the middle of the night to cover me with your grandmother’s quilt
and I wake up warm in your arms but you’re in Labrador               
who the hell goes to Labrador
I thought that’s where those loyal dogs come from
you tell me it must be the friendly ghost of the old lady who died in our apartment
blessing us every night because we both agreed not to tear away her favourite 70s wallpaper

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Under duress

By Ahmad Danny Ramadan

​Content warning: torture

There was that day I looked up and called upon God
-dammit, it’s hard when thoughts are chained to a wall
instead I will ruminate about butterflies that flew
printed on the headscarf of my grandmother they flew
out of my throat hanging upside down chained by the feet and my face was red
roses that grew on my grandmother’s balcony in little
pots limited in their roots like prisoners in tiny cells that see
no light and are planted right in their own
piss and I couldn’t breathe when hands
pressed on my windpipe and took away
my singing voice.
 
There was that day I grabbed my veins and drew
spider webs instead of blood
-y hell this won’t go so well unless I look back in my mirror and see scratches
of kittens on my skin instead of the marks of lashes
and cigarette burns and I don’t want to pull another
puff from my joint unless I can go to a happy place
instead I drown in an ocean of vomit and dive deep searching for pearls.
 
There was that day the door opened for me to see the sun
-day sitting in my grandmother’s lap drinking milk
with honey and cocoa powder and she looks me in the eyes and tells me that this is
my kingdom and I’m her prince instead
I take the cold air in with unguarded ribs broken
twice and I might never stop aching unless they insert
a metal rod in my ribcage and open it up like theatre curtains.
 
There was that day but instead I will smile and throw a joke
about heavy accents and dumb terrorists
maybe people think me full of myself or an ignorant machine
producing fluffy clouds and daydreams so you all can go and ffff-
fuck it I will keep this to myself instead
I will smile
and throw a joke. 

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Ahmad Danny Ramadan is an award-winning Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker and LGBTQ-refugees activist. Since his arrival in Canada as a refugee, Ramadan published his award-winning debut novel The Clothesline Swing. He is currently working on his next novel, The Foghorn Echoes, and a collection of short fiction, The Syrian Survival Notebook. His children’s book, Salma the Syrian Chef, will be published in 2020 by Annick Press. He was named among the Top Immigrants to Canada 2017, and won both the Social Activist StandOut Award and the Independent Publishers Book Award for LGBTQ fiction.
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He is currently finishing his Masters in Fine Arts - Creative Writing at UBC and lives with his husband-in-training in Vancouver.