Blue Shift

Fady Joudah | 141 Nightly, a longing, no repression some trigger released, snatches me, after the passage of many years, for who, I haven’t a clue, the beloved nameless beyond erasure, when among the unsleeping, a recrudescence for the longing to die better. A longing behind a longing: my illness is past a certain ecstasy in the thrill of deceit, nightly a life lived in disremembering an interiority that walks me far in search of one whose end I write in my calligraphy, a stranger’s end, nightly snatches me. Not enough that she suffered in headlines while so many of our good hearts refuse to believe that they refuse to believe: names poetry Blue Shift Fady Joudah 142 | Fady Joudah I count and remove, or is this the repression you intend: someone you know is on the brink of suicide, of murder, is it also not a national question? If my love’s eyes are stone memory will carve them still unforgettable. To die better, I search my distances for Fadwa, for Alyssa, they’re doing well, thank you for asking. A consolation that doesn’t outlive hope: a fatal disease we’ve made curable mostly here, and nightly longing exiles longing. Nightly, your strings ring me with friends who go on singing the hours, smoking the air, drinking unaware that I was from among them taken. And the names, all but one, disappear, if one’s ever lucky in our century. ...