Why I Haven't Told You Yet by Emtithal Mahmoud

31 Days of Poetry: Day Three

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. The 3rd of August’s offering is ‘Why I Haven’t Told You Yet’ by Sudanese-American poet, Emtithal ‘Emi’ Mahmoud, taken from her collection ‘Sisters’ Entrance.’

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Today I’m actually still reading The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón, the collection from which I took yesterday’s poem, because reading a collection a day isn’t always feasible and I really don’t want to race through it. Instead, days like today provide the perfect opportunity to share poems from collections I’ve previously read but have no plans to revisit just yet.

Why I Haven’t Told You Yet is taken from Emi Mahmoud’s debut collection, Sisters’ Entrance, which was published in 2018 by Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Why I Haven’t Told You Yet

To the guy I like: wake the fuck up.
I'm standing here, all morning dew brilliant
and you, brick wall, bane of my existence,
with the gaping mouth and the misdirected
    conviction.

I want to cry for you,
but I don't because this, this is hilarious.
This is the cruelest kind of mirth –
To be standing 3 inches from the center of your
    affection
and yet still, there's a universe,
a river of obstinacy
a field of missed opportunities and horrible, horrible
    timing standing between us.

You stupid, stupid manchild.
With the barely there smile
and the dimple on your right cheek,
I left the girl in me standing at an altar of her own
    fears waiting for you,
but you're here
at the receiving end of this poem.

A friend once told me that romance is like a house;
you, the girl, open the window, and he, the boy,
    climbs in.

Hey, asshole! The window is open!

That's when I start wondering why I'm standing in a
    house.
A house built by a generation of men and women
    who have a habit of putting people in pretty boxes.

I wonder what broken architect laid these bricks.
Is this how it's going to be?
Me, walking the corridors of my own mind,
seeing the telltale signs of a boy who doesn't belong
    there?
His handprint on the mirror,
his silhouette at the corner table.
I open my eyes
You once said I'm cute when I'm angry,
Well, I'm about to look phenomenal.

We teach our girls to quarantine their emotions–
isolate heart and reason or risk perceptions of
    hysteria.
We're taught that our anger is a misconception,
that our discontent will pass as long as we smile
    pretty,
clean up nice, and play into this courtship dichotomy.
This twisted game of act and receive
where your role is assigned at birth.
Well, this is me telling you

that the only winning move is not to play.
So, I'm gonna burn this whole house down.

I'm ripping through these walls
so fast that millenia of cages will rattle loose
and every person who's ever stood at this window
And every other person who's ever stood on the
    other side, too paralyzed to move, will walk free.
This is an official notice–

Emi has left the building.
But first, a word of advice: for those of you still
    dancing around houses– just use the door.

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You might think that the main reason I chose this poem was because I appreciate its loud call for women to dare to set aside centuries-old expectations that they be demure and reserved- at most employing coy glances and other subtle indicators of attraction while they wait (and hope) to be chosen but, really, I just find myself amused by the bluntness of its opening (‘To the guy I like: wake the fuck up’) and the unexpectedly funny diss that is the line, ‘you stupid, stupid manchild’, which so perfectly encapsulates the feeling of frustration that it’s even possible for someone to be so dim that they cannot see what you’ve made so, so obvious.

For those unfamiliar with the origins of the term, the ‘sisters’ entrance’ is how some mosques refer to the women’s entryway if the building has separate entrances for men and women to access their respective prayer spaces. In this collection, Mahmoud charts the transition from childhood to adulthood/ girlhood to womanhood and, with it, an introduction to ‘the sisters’ side’- a singular space - not necessarily within a mosque, but absolutely reserved for women- in which all manner of activity might take place: praying, teaching, learning, organising, partying, dancing (‘no drama, no apologies, no worries, no reservations, no sleeves…’).

While the collection carries weighty themes of war, displacement, and loss, it also centres the more intimate settings of our lives- the places in which we gather to mourn or to celebrate, places of worship, community spaces, the schoolyards and classrooms in which childhoods are spent, the places we call home and the people who make it so, or wherever else it might be that we feel able to exist in the fullness of our selves.

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A Note on the War in Sudan

As the country approaches the seventeenth month of this current war, the people of Sudan continue to suffer horrific violence and mass displacement, and the number of people killed as a direct consequence of the war is set to rise catastrophically as famine takes hold in more and more areas. If you’re in a position to support in any way, I have linked a number of initiatives here.

Also, included in the photo above is the stunning tote bag I recently purchased from Heena C. Khan. It features a depiction of the iconic image of Sudanese activist, Alaa Salah and you can order your own here, with all proceeds going to Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA).

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Lastly, now that I’ve officially completed three days of this project I just wanted to say how much I appreciate how enthusiastically it’s been received! I hope you’ll continue to enjoy the experience of reading the poems as much as I’m enjoying sharing them.

See you on day four,

Tasnim