Sura 94 - (The Laying Open)

It's been a while. Sura 94 has been a favorite of mine since I took my intro to the Qur'an class sophomore year. This poem is loosely based on themes in the Sura, and like many passages in Qur'an, seeks to describe G-d as gender-ambiguous. Hope it is well received.

الإنشراح‎
The Laying Open

I do not know what we were.
I did not know then what nestled and bled blackly between your ribs.

We came once in the noontime when you were stooped and dragging heavy things.
Like two white winds, we pulled you with us past your mother and your father,
past the dry scars where the heat had cut the bean fields,
the flaps of loosely tied home tents
the hazy shiver of limping lambs

There was a moment’s shock.
her impossibly fine blade against your paper skin,
His laying you open against the dust,
We scuffled briefly in the cloud you’d kicked up
but soon you let those winds sweep in and around the corners and the tight spaces.
You let them possess each organ in turn,
every vessel that held the rare well waters of your small being.
Only winds that cut long and slanting across sand and
bicker endlessly over the truths of history and humanity and the nature of happiness
could so decisively wash away the black fist that had imbedded itself within your heart.

In an a golden basin, we ran our fingers along each glistening surface of your greatest wonderment,
flicked dark cancerous imperfections to the sand for the beetles and the jackals so that you might be free of those heavy things.
your heart was hot with the hurts you’d collected,
swallowed, circulated in your blood.
I do not know what each of those things were,
but the white winds swept snow up and in to smother the coals.
You had never seen snow.

After the hot things there is the easing.
After the hot things there is the easing.