Deixis Read online

  the other content to be imperfect - vulnerable

  I don my best suit and check the time so you can see my watch

  I pull my shirt open and show you the scars

  I hold a coin behind the thick window I’ve closed between us

  I show you that only a few strands remain between me and my falling

  “according to the Copenhagen interpretation”

  “heal me, lover.”

  this afternoon was yesterday morning

  this morning tomorrow afternoon

  the days drag in anticipation

  I give one and take the other,

  replace the other with the one

  which one will appear

  next?

  21

  me failures

  a black, short sleeved blouse

  in winter there?

  where icy blue trees

  see breath from a distance?

  selfish of me

  to see a demure smile where oppression pasted lips closed

  “Leave all preconceptions behind” read the sign after security

  One woman was wearing sixty dead chinchillas.

  22

  rayon?

  I’m sure I don’t like Rayon

  why would I dream you in it?

  23

  doubt

  who I, through you am

  who you, through me are

  24

  again, …but looser

  It wouldn’t have been much of a reach to stretch my hand across the table with the same delicacy I once used to carry a rescued a butterfly.

  I would have just barely touched the lowest of seams.

  One finger would have remained on that seam while another, perhaps the lithest of my fingers all, the smallest, and furthest tall, would have

  just begun

  to see the sun rise this morning

  through the dust of my hazy black window.

  25

  who’s healing whom

  I understand now that I’ve reached out to you

  nothing we do is known

  if we are lucky we understand ourselves

  we are rarely lucky

  I am lucky

  You are my luck.

  I thought I had something for you

  It turns out you had something for me

  all along

  even from the start

  18 years ago

  I reached out

  But I didn’t know to whom

  K was there

  but I wanted you

  what you had for me

  It was never about what I could do for you

  you had nothing for me

  but the wound before the healing

  the death before the rising.

  Last night you said ‘My son's calling’ –

  you are a mother now

  I remember the girl in the denim skirt

  the white ankle socks

  I don’t think she ever had a childhood

  Is that why I reached out to you now?

  Do I need a mother?

  Are you my mother?

  What is a mother.

  26

  breathtaking

  how can I tell you how much you’ve given me?

  by taking my natural cadence

  slipping in beneath me

  pulled out quickly

  I gasp at my own nakedness.

  27

  angels

  labor is short for we angels

  delivery a ribbon of warm toothpaste

  a babble of toasted sesame oil

  a stream of organic shampoo.

  we just "slip right out" as we say in the business

  after all, our missions begin at conception.

  28

  You came to me last night in my little house in Amarriyah, wearing the same outfit as the day you leapt into my arms on the second floor of that industrial school we attended together. You looked every bit as young and beautiful as that day, even younger, even more beautiful. Much like you do today. Your face changed shades so many times, and shapes. It was sometimes your face and at others a face I had never seen before, but still in a way your face. You have so many wonderful faces. I loved each one, with each one was surprised at just how many Deixis’ there are. We talked inside my little house in Amarriyah, in nearly every room we walked and talked. I listened to your every word and watched your every expression, how with each emotion another new deixis would appear. In one room you stood in front of the window, leaning against the wall, telling me a happy story about a time when you came home with grass stained knees. The sun was warm behind you.

  You spent the whole day with me, just wandering from room to room, telling me your stories, never stopping to listen to mine. I had nothing to say, just content with watching the many faces of the many Deixises.

  At one point we went outside later in the day when it was cooler, and while telling me another story you slipped on the edge of my porch and reached out to me, but before I was able to catch you, you found the branch of a large tree, held on, and began swinging back and forth laughing, your little socks now bunched up around your ankles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so happy as those few minutes you swung back and forth on the tree branch.

  I have many friends. Tree, rock, wind, rainbow, meteor, river, bear, dog, fish, and many others - so even though I may not be there when you stumble, one of my friends will. Just reach out and grab on. Dancing partners are many.

  One time a VIP flew into Riyadh to see the Chairman. Unfortunately the Chairman wasn’t in the office. Someone had made a mistake on the schedule and as soon as the noise started, they all pointed the finger at me and said, “you!”

  Everything went mad. What do you tell a VIP who has flown in from another city and is waiting in the saloon to see a man who’s not even in the office? Well, before I had a chance to answer that question, in the middle of a madness that would last only sixty desperate seconds, my phone rang and it was my sweet wife calling from the airport in Frankfurt. “I can’t talk now,” I said, and she hung up on me. Such a bad sense of timing, I thought, frustrated at now having to deal with two issues at one time. What kind of punishment is this, that at the precise moment I need to be alone and think, she makes the only call she’ll be able to from an expensive pay phone in an airport less than half way to her destination, six hours flying from where I stood. And why would she get so angry? Can’t she understand my situation?

  Well, later in the day, while recounting the whole event to my Pakistani colleague, I told him how utterly mocking it seemed the universe had become, how bad her and my timing had become, how at precisely the very second I needed to resolve an urgent professional issue, she called me, and it had happened before, too, so many times.

  Khalid listened carefully to me as I spoke, as he always did, as he always would. When I finally finished, and while imagining he'd shake his head in sympathy for my plight, he said something I will never forget. He said, "No, Emile. You got it wrong. She was calling to help you.”

  Deixis, I would give everything to go back to that phone call.

  And to the day you jumped into my arms.

  I love you.