On this road in a blue uniform
I walked,
and on that road over there,
I was taken away.
On that road,
I laughed till I wept,
tenderness tasered away – dazed.

On that road,
I saw home,
like an instant caught on tape,
stuck on repeat,
as you run on asphalt.

The transport van
a cancer,
gnawing at the roads.
The city is a body,
drowned in sleep,
that suddenly contains
a prison on wheels.
If you happen to ride in it,
you’ll see
all walks of life
walking about.
An incredible feat in itself,
if only you knew.

Or if you once happen to ride
the international highway to Natroun,
you’ll take in the sights,
the people, listen to the sounds,
all the while, you are the alien— voiceless, invisible,
screaming like the dead.
But no one will hear you
from now till doomsday.

If you spot your home through the wire mesh,
look away.

Your eye is no more than a memory,
like an instant caught on tape,
stuck on repeat,
as you run on asphalt.

On this road in a blue uniform,
I walked,
and on that road over there,
I was taken away.

Roads like memories are hazy.
In seconds,
they shape things that you forgot,
they startle
with something memory erased.

Me and my feelings
battered each other
when I recognized from the yard,
the home of my loved ones,
on a road
known to me only by its smell,
my hands cuffed behind me,
my eyes blindfolded.

On this road
I went,
on this road
I came.
On this road
I dreamt and yearned,
and so often on this road
I circled,
but never ever in the end
did I arrive.

On this road,
now,
I walk alone.
I call out in regret:
“If only our friends could stand with me
here on the asphalt.”

It was nighttime 
so I lit the lamps.
I don’t know what transpired
in the darkness out there,
but I suddenly found
the gloom inside more murky
than the shadows of the street.

I had gotten home late that day
after the others split up into groups of three.
There were things unraveling inside me.
I don’t know why it was
on this particular night,
but things inside me were darkening
and for them to lift, we had to part.
I had to be late reaching home,
get a stony response after greeting my father,
cry bitterly with no one to hold me
in stolen closeness.

But oh did she really have to die
to make me disbelieve in the world’s embrace
and its warm gatherings.
I tell myself that this world in general
disbelieves in her own light.
But double-crossing world,
I was a bright and blazing bulb
extinguished
in your night.
If I ever light again, I will barely
dispel darkness and dejection.
Darkness lives in rooms within me —
and I move into them myself.
My despair can fit into a pouch.
It’s there I live.
The poor one wants to sleep curled up
in another’s misery.
We hide in each other’s pain,
in what can’t be soothed away.
We are detached from a world prized by many —
who die clinging to it.

She’s always needed
in or out.
She swears that I resemble her within.
Then I swear that I am not coming back,
that I had no faith in the street’s creed,
or a religion that proclaims morning won’t rise,
that as an individual I disavowed the group,
I believed in reclusiveness.
She tells me that my prison is not walls or gates,
but falsehoods and illusory lights,
that under them people are always
unclear.
My prison isn’t cells,
it’s creatures, human beings,
all of life — opposing me.
And, seriously, I have never been social.
Each time I love people in bulk,
I end by hating them.
The opposite happens
with one person at a time,
at least it did before I disappeared.

My dreams could still crack the ceiling
until that day I came back late
when no one was waiting for me.
I was sitting alone smoking,
pondering cautiously,
envisioning wildly,
as if I could walk this world
with a candle balanced on my shoulder.
I turned on the lights, but hers remained unlit.
I wished that life would understand me,
I wished it would
give me a chance,
and wait behind me,
while I crouched down
to unlock her handcuffs.

Until that day when her final light
went out,
there was still a glimmer of a flash
within me that remained lit.