We deserve a medal you and I for how we stalled desire into elastic. How we keep tugging at both ends for a gust of air to stroke the fire beneath our patience. But here’s a secret darling: this isn’t my first waiting Olympics. I’ve waited years for my life to start when I thought life only happens where everyone speaks the language I was raised to worship. Then came the long layovers—the hours upon hours at the airports of cities I was only allowed to glimpse from a padlocked sky. The endless lines at customs while officers sniffed every brown skin for the bashful tang of contraband comfort food. I waited two years once to see my mother’s smile outside a phone screen, to watch her from my bed at dawn, crouching on her prayer rug, the light tempered by her dark scarf draped over the lampshade, and to know that half her prayers are on my behalf. I’ve juggled enough jet lags for the needles of my biological clock to spin beyond time’s reach, beyond despair. But darling, what if that’s how love wears off—you wait until you forget that you’re waiting.
Yosra Bouslama is a PhD candidate in literature at the University of North Texas. Born and raised in Tunisia, she received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue graduate studies in The United States in 2017. Her research interests include African Diaspora Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Three of her poems are forthcoming in Decolonial Passage.
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Yeah. I feel this one. I have such little patience for anything. It feels like agony. I can't imagine waiting so long it wears off. . . Whew.
love the idea of a "waiting Olympics"
(and that is such a great poem opening!)