Existing in Big Ways by Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan

31 Days of Poems: Day 11. Why are we afraid to be nothing?

For the month of August I’ll be participating in The Sealey Challenge and attempting to read a book of poetry every day (or at least a poem or two), and every day I’ll be sharing a poem with you. If poetry isn’t your thing, a month isn’t too long a time, I promise. But if it is, I hope this series affords you an opportunity to discover some new favourites or revisit some old ones.

The 11th of August’s offering is ‘Existing in Big Ways’ by Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan’, which was first published in her 2019 collection, ‘Postcolonial Banter’ (Verve Poetry Press).

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Existing in Big Ways

1.
what would being safe look like?
what would it look like to feel truly safe?
how would that sit on our bodies?

would it look like being free to walk aimlessly in the night?
would it look like being free to walk aimlessly in the day?
would it look like sitting with legs spread wide open on a train?

what would it feel like to be so big we were safe?
what would it feel like to be dark and big and safe?
to exist in big ways
to take up space

to be big beyond the names men leave us with
big enough that white people don't shatter those names in their
mouths

to be big beyond borders
to be spilling over seas over lands over seas
too big for prisons
too big for detention centres
so big that bullets bounce off
so big they can't deport us
too big for natural disasters
tornadoes and tsunamis

big like superpowers
big like blocking bulldozers that come to smash your door down
big like keeping the door closed to riot police
big like small children's dreams

big enough to turn the earth's orbit in another direction
big enough to move mountain ranges back under the sea
so big no one steals the land from us the first time
so big we don't think of the land as ours

so big that we are the land
all the land is us
and there is no land or us there is you and me and we and we and we
so big that I am you
that I can't hurt you 'cos your pain is my pain

so big we belong
so big we are belonging
so big they can't reduce us to here or there or in-between

so big we don't drown this time

so big we're stationary

so big they can't kick us out
there is no in or out there is only round and round and round
so big we're a universe
so big we matter

so big that when we cry the world ends

so big that when we cry the world ends

2.
but what about being too big?
big like the only way I know you're big is that there's someone left
small
big like making someone else feel small

big like unfair
like overexpansion
like that's actually someone else's space

big like empire
like colonisation
like danger

like a blooming flower that is not a flower but a tree
not a tree but a forest
not a forest but a forest fire
big like a forest fire burning down a mountain side

but like mountains crumbling to dust
like yawm-al-qiyammah
like destruction

like he can't breathe, stop, he can't breathe, can't you see he can't breathe - 

big like big boys
big boys don't cry
big boys hurt and hurt and hurt

big like violence
not the word but the thing it describes
not the time it takes for the bullet to leave his gun and hit your neck
but big like the time it takes to process

big like grief
like genocide
like speaking over us
like erasing us
like no one is listening
like you. may as well be background noise

3.
why are we afraid to be small though?
we want to be so big so big so big so big so big
why are we afraid to be insignificant?
afraid to be inconsequential?
to be so small we go unseen
to be so small we rely on one another
so small that alone we are nothing

why are we afraid to be nothing?

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I don’t have much to say today because the day has been long (not a bad thing, just busy) and I’m a little tired. I think that’s OK, though- this poem speaks for itself well enough.

See you on day twelve,

Tasnim

P.S. if you appreciate these posts and you’d like to buy me a coffee, you can do so here. I’d never say no and it would always be appreciated.