Rukan Saif
The last time I saw my father this close to God was when the doctors cut open his chest and took
his heart into their palms and named it lost. So when he declines the call to prayer for some time,
he is saying he is angry with his God and with the absence of a country worth living in. My
father a boat sailed an ocean too far. Swamping with longing. Even the ghosts have gone
missing. How many ways are there to say this? He wants to be haunted by more than ache. That
when he was a boy and the jinn approached his brother, he had been watching across the street,
hugging a soccer ball to his chest like a prayer. My father has dreamt of the jinn since. The
dream goes like this: he rises, fire-made, into the clouds and child’s poses to a heaven that won’t
rupture after the sun sets. His God views this as prostration and so it is nearly enough.
Where does unbelief
begin? In a dark yawning
heat with blurred edges.
Rukan Saif is a Bangladeshi American poet from Los Angeles, CA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Furrow Magazine, phoebe, ONE ART, and elsewhere. She is a digital resident with The Seventh Wave and is currently based in Boston, MA.