Solitude Exercises Poem by Iman Mersal

He sleeps in the next room, a wall between us.
I do not mean any symbols by this,
only there is a wall between us.
I can fill it with pictures of my lover
smoking or thinking.
But I must find a neutral place for them,
respecting the distance between us.

It seems God does not love me.
I am old enough to believe that
God has not loved me for a long time, not since
he loved the math teacher
and gave him sharp eyesight
and colored chalks
and many chances to torture a girl like me
who cannot divine the link
between two unattached numbers.

But it's not important that God love me.
No one in this world, not even the righteous ones,
can prove that God loves him.

I can open the door and shut it
softly so my lover does not wake.
A girl who goes out to the street
without a place to shelter her
is not dramatic at all.

When Dostoevsky said,
"One must have a home to go to,"
he was talking about classical people
who wore long sideburns
and overcoats resembling loneliness.

I do not like melodrama
and find no reason to empty a flower of its joy
to match it to a loved one who had died.

If I leave now
I will grab the hand of the first person I meet
and force him to go with me to a side street café.
I will tell him that a man sleeps in the next room
without nightmares,
that his head was not level with my body
and he never became
a garbage pail for me, not even once—he let everything
scatter out into the street.
I will tell this stranger that I am an orphan,
and that I used to think that was enough to write good poems,
which proved untrue,
and that I did not take good care of myself
so much that a small inflammation in my sinuses
is about to become a tumor.
Yet I continue to lie—one of course
is supposed to be angelic for a little while
before dying to make it easy for his friends
to find good things to say about him—aware
that if he leaves me, my death will be easier
than moving my right foot.

At a side street café
I will tell a man I don't know many things all at once,
and I will press my vocal cords
on his old wish to be useful.
Maybe he will take me to his house and wake his wife.
I will watch her step toward me as she
tramples a filthy rug like a tractor and as I feign
shyness to comfort her and make her feel satisfied
with her husband while he advises me to start over
and as I promise him to learn to play a musical instrument that matches my
small frame
and that we meet again during the national holidays.

I threatened all who loved me with my death
if I ever lose them.
Yet I do not think I will die for anyone's sake.
Surely, suicides must have trusted life more
than they should have, and must have thought
it was waiting for them somewhere else.

I will not leave here before he dies in front of me.
I will place my ear to his chest where silence is so clear that
even a cat
with the claws of a disappointed woman who tries
to hysterically topple the pail filled
with the remains of our evening together (which
I place at the top of the stairs
to prove to the neighbors that I have a safe family)
will not make me doubt it.

I will hold your fingers
and watch with the precision
of a surgeon who does not need scalpels to remove
pustules from a deteriorating body.
I will place them in an ice bowl where there are no tremors…
And I will leave here
clad in loss, and light.

You must die in front of me.
The death of loved ones is a wonderful opportunity to find alternatives.
On the East Delta train I often pick a suitable
lady who opens the coffers of her sympathy when I tell her
my mother died when I was six.

The truth is
it happened when I was seven,
but for me "six" seems to have greater effect.
Middle-aged mothers are addicted to sadness
maybe to justify mourning before it begins.
These touch-ups in the telling
have a magic
that cannot be understood by those
who never needed to steal
from others.