Illustration by Upasana Agarwal
It’s not night that’s the problem, it’s war.
The cat on the neighbor’s rooftop waits to be rattled with sound. I’ve planted four trees. I was
never supposed to stay in America.
I should’ve dyed my hair when I had the chance. A tattoo of my grandfather’s birthplace. A good
Palestinian would wear it on her skin.
Darwish: No night is long enough for us to dream twice.
This dark is a study on redaction:
Nothing will protect us from the something. Not even your mother’s
ewelry. I am always a man in my dreams. I push women onto the
mattress so hard they drown. I press the o mouth of rifles to their temples.
I pull.
My brother and I get night terrors. ICD-10-CM diagnostic code F51.4. There is a number for
every grief. My brother’s shouts tug my cousin and me from the other bedroom. It takes five
minutes to wake him. Ezra, Ezra, he cries out, and nobody appears. I am selfish and want Beirut
gone now that I’m done with it, like a Lego boat.
See also: Disruptions from sleep are often caused by physical, neurological, and social factors.
I used to walk the college campus until dawn, the trees dancing for me. The exhaustion pulling
hallucinations from my frontal lobe. A decade later, the windows of Manhattan pulsed with bad
lights and faces, a nightmare of waking.
See also: I run to the living room half-asleep, clutching my throat. I’m choking, I yell at my
husband. I’m choking.
See also: The diagnostic tests reveal some unexplained interruptions of sleep, what we consider
micro-wakings.
[The sunlight rubbing off our hands like flakes of gold.]
See also: You’re breathing, my husband says.
Says, You keep forgetting.
Says, To say you have no air only means you do.
