In the Grand Scheme of TragediesBy Salma Hussain
In the grand scheme of tragedies
mine are not unassailable or immutable. In truth whatever the fuck they are I intend to fold them into meringues tarts & scouring paste. For no one needs the sob stories of how I suffered under my mother (a woman renowned for her beauty and cruelty)— well certainly not me; no—least and last me. No—such brutality must not become my life’s lede. Instead I will pitch past pitch of grief into present and aim to spend my second life scribbling: odes to summer mornings where I detail shafts of sunshine sparkling on the kitchen walls, & to the smell of home-made jam wafting in the air with my children’s laughter and lo how I will linger on the countertops sticky with sugar water and of course I hope not to forget to opine on fruits ripening in their porcelain ceramic bowls— preferably plums or peaches but lemons will do in a pinch. And I do so hope to avoid a diatribe on [politics] [racism] [war] [colonization] [patriarchy] because I told you already didn’t I that I hope fervently desperately on my knees begging pretty please to alchemize my hurt into instruction. Anyway who would believe me. In any case it would be madness, would it not, it would be as if in the time before the discovery of lemonade I hawked mounds of lemons in a wheelbarrow— intensely yellow acidic tarty produce— Lemons! Lemons! Buy them by the bushel! Take them home and add water I’d beseech & the neighbours would flash their palms & sneer at me There goes the village genius they’d taunt & who could blame them. After all it takes much too long for our bodies to reconfigure re member and longer still for the [shadows] that our bodies shelter— yes much too long and often much too late for bones and souls to welcome that every adversity is a baking ingredient in the alchemy of tragedy into empathy. Whosoever rose that had not first fallen & is there even mending without first breaking & if a mother abandons you in a forest & no one is around to hear it does it even matter that the only sound is your skin peeling & your very fascia bursting with a mewling sobbing ache for ammaji. Round and round spiral the sob stories and do you really want to hear more because it gets much more pathetic but how else do I step off this merry go round except maybe by taking my particular mound of lemons and finding uses like scouring powders & thirst-quenching drinks & tarty desserts. How else but by grating lemon zest & wringing each drop to mix with flour sugar egg + pinch of trauma. And of course you must know lemon juice banishes odors rust stains & grease and makes dishes windows and glasses sparkle? Won’t you agree then that after all this use-finding the real story will be in my invention & formulation in the HOW-TO— the pots pans and linens made clean the house smelling fresh and reborn the skin forming a new barrier the cells re organizing into something better not bitter & as it should be the lede will be in the rebirth. Then you will understand me and I will understand me— why and how frequently & devotedly I need to make poems that are odes to ripening fruit & splotches of sunshine— then (my) body will re configure knowing accepting embracing— that this relentless lugging of a rust-free wheelbarrow overflowing with lemons born from dirt and ground and earthworm washed rubbed embraced thrice; that this cavorting into the town square— like a madman heretic shepherdess poetess or do I mean prophet ess yes most definitely a shoeless nomad peddling snake oil yelling at the top of my lungs I’ve found it! I’ve found it! The cure for my pain! And for a mere 9.99 it could be the cure for yours too! — yes, finally, my body will re array that this heresy, this too is a type of worship an alternate forehead’s kiss to the ground a noble endeavour this — the niyat/intent to shrink tumour trauma and tragedy by doling out recipes for achingly beautiful batshit bitter fruit Salma Hussain writes poetry and prose. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, Temz Review, Queens Quarterly, CV2, The Antigonish Review, The Hong Kong Review and Pleiades: Literature in Context. Her young adult novel, The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan, about a young girl’s immigration and menstruation journey, was published by Penguin Random House in 2022.
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