The Night Is Tough

The night is tough.

My heart is heavy, and my eyes are heavy with sleep, but sleep does not arrive as mercy. It stands at a distance, watching me, while sorrow sits closer than breath.

There is no light in sight.

Who should I retreat to?

Should I return to Ghalib, to the ruins he left burning inside language? Should I sit with Forough Farrokhzad and let her strange, wounded brightness keep me company? Should I continue staring into the screen, waiting for some machine to answer with a tenderness the world has forgotten? Or should I finally pay heed to my father’s advice, because maybe this is the last chance, and maybe last chances do not announce themselves twice?

Then I think of my mother.

I think of a mother made to yearn for her own sons while they pull away from her like strangers. I think of phones being snatched, rooms being locked, brothers fighting among themselves, children falling into thirst, neglect, and inherited hatred.

I think of innocence being torn apart before it even learns the shape of safety.

And then I ask myself: why would God listen to us?

What have we bargained our souls for?

What tore the fiber inside us? What thinned the margins of the invisible? What made us so poor that even mercy feels like a currency we no longer possess?

I retreat to salat.

I call His name.

Yet even in prayer, the mind does not become silent. It drags the dead back into the room. It asks what flame a soul carries after it leaves the world. It asks whether a person can be reached even from hell. It asks whether I should pray for her still, when no prayer can bring her body back, and no grief can undo the final violence of departure.

Should I sleep and fear the dream?

For the heart may yearn.

For the eyes may tear.

But the friends will not appear.

The fabric must tear. Perhaps it should have torn already, on the day I avoided the rightful smear. That stain was mine to carry. That stain was my currency here and hereafter.

And the sin I hold does not clear.

Not by forgetting.

Not by sleep.

Not by the screen.

Not even by the long blue light that keeps pretending it is dawn.