laundry - Part II

You had asked - Where does one begin?
We begin here. In medias res. In the middle.
In between. For that’s where we are.
In the present. which is also the past. And the future.
We begin together.
We begin thinking together.
We begin naming together.
We begin bearing witness together.
We begin honouring each other.
We begin sharing stories with one another,
Of one another, together.
We begin writing stories.
We begin restoring and re-storying together.
We begin at the pedestrian crossing. At home.
At the border. In this room.
We begin at the dimly lit liminal spaces
That hide the ghosts we are haunted by.
We begin, as Zembylas says, “having adventures and being in the impasse together, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and also, allowing for some healing and resting, waiting for it not to drop.”

laundry - Part I

For many many days now, you have found no energy
To do your laundry. Even today, here you are,
Not having done it, but willing to air it, in public.
It feels like a sign for our times.
Perhaps mother would disapprove. But here you are.
This might not be what we signed up for. But here you are.

A Laundry list. Of things done. not done. Of things come undone.
Confessions.
You lose track. Too slow to keep up.
Too lethargic. Too privileged.
Too traumatized.
Too self-absorbed, they seem to call it self-care.
Sometimes you forget to care.
On some days, you politely decline.
On others, you rudely refuse.
It started when you no longer knew how.

Yemen. South Sudan. Palestine. Haiti.
Burkina Faso. Congo. Ukraine. Iran.
And all in between.

Stop. What’s with the naming? Rephrase.
Ok

Genocide. Famine. Bombing. Insurgency.
Occupation. Coup. Wrongful detainment.
And all in between.

Stop. What is this voyeuristic morbidity? Rephrase.
Ok

Rubble. Blood. Smoke. Hunger. Homelessness.
Separation. Grief. Chaos. Loss. Incomprehension.
And all in between.

Stop. Why so sensationalist? Rephrase.
Ok

Places. Days. Events. Statistics. News. Shock and awe.

All across, the world burns. In fires of varying intensities.
You watch. And look away.

You don’t take up friends’ invitations to join protests.
For the time you spend on social media,

You don’t share anything you read. Or think.
You don’t react to any posts that throw light
On the darkness around. You expend energy, instead,
On changing the algorithm. It takes time, because
You slip up. But ah, that persistence.

You stay in safe sanctuaries you loosely call home,
Even though they are not where you belong -
But belonging, and home, and place
Are preciously scarce these days. Only some of us
Are allowed to dwell on it. You have shut your windows
to the rain and this politics of engineered scarcity.

Every day, you cry. Despair, desperation, and longing
Still catch you unawares. It unfurls daily,
Like the destruction. We all crumble.
But that’s one half of the ritual. The other half -
You wash your face, switch to an old rerun
Of something mindless
On a borrowed Netflix account.
Comforting in its predictability, reinforcing walls of denial
That privilege allows you to build.
You have not spoken of the tattered world
With your 12 year old at home.
You have introduced her to music, to drown out the wails,
But she doesn’t know that.
You have given in to fear. And retaliated with numbness.
Its easier than some of us might think, you say.
You have closed your eyes. Zoned out of conversations.
You don’t contemplate life anymore.
You have listened to stories of pain,
And empowered yourself with learned helplessness.
You have become resilient in your ignorance. Wallowed
In the luxury of distanced sympathy. Just enough.
You have let passions and convictions move on,
And held on to empty Insta consolations,
Its pseudo psychology gives you reel length relief
And lets you pretend it is all okay, and that your
Transient concern, that brief moment of shame as you
Go out to eat with friends yet again; those
15 seconds of guilt as you walk freely on this land that
Is not your own - is enough.

You used to want to speak up, to say something.
But the language for it escapes you now.
You have nothing to offer. The gift of
awkward silences is yours to keep.
Sometimes you manage to hold
Their accusatory glances with derisive whataboutery.
Most times, you don’t raise your eyes
to meet another gaze. Lowered in expectation
in self-doubt as much as self-preservation,
this sight needs no vision.
Perhaps it is not only the mind, but also
the body that must re-learn how to respond
to the crushing weightlessness of being.

The laundromat is 5 minutes away.
This dirty linen, the very fabric of your being,
Needs some cleaning, some clearing.
Are you up for the task?
The hope you permit yourself after much struggle
fades when you ask - Where does one begin?