Isam:

I think you feed straight from the wound.

Why don’t you send me more poetry?

Don’t worry, I’m a good swimmer.

And . . . what’s your name?

You have to tell me. Otherwise I’ll call you The End of the World, The Crushing Force of Nonexistence, other nice names like that. Arthur Rimbaud called his mother the “Mouth of Darkness.” Do you know your poem is like that same mouth? The Mouth of Darkness?

I’m not afraid of the dark.

So. What’s your name?

 

Isam:

Why don’t you write back?

Are you mad?

How do you look when you’re mad? Do your ears get red?

Do you break dishes, or wash them?

Tell me.

 

Fatima:

I live inside the poem. From here the world seems an illusion.

You’re part of this illusion, and illusions frighten me more than facts.

I live cut off from everything, in a mythical underground tomb.

I’ve weaned the child inside me.

That is my name.

 

Isam:

Gently now, Fatima.

Before you leave . . .

Give me another poem.

 

Isam:

I’ve been waiting for you here for two hours. This is a farce.

It’s clear you play the silence well.

How many hours do you practice a day?

Tell me something I don’t like so I can forget all this.

I want to turn off this damn computer, it’s hot and irritated with me.

And you.

 

Fatima:

What do you want?

 

Isam:

I want what a poet wants from a poem. I want to love poetry through you.

I want to throw you, write you, cry you, tear you up, fathom you, travel in your blood.

I want to inhabit you.

Sometimes I kiss my poems.

Sometimes I burn them.

It depends on how beautiful they are.

What I want from you is everything.

Fatima:

Very moving.

I almost believed you.

 

That was the last message.