‘Ji Haushi’
— Nix Thérèse
In ‘Ji Haushi,’ the speaker is constantly tracking their lack of faith during Ramadan, yet absence doesn’t stop this landscape from feeling full. Ambivalence is a vessel we can truly engage with because even the singular ritual of washing addresses these communal desires to spiritually reconvene: I could have showered and had / war sung out of me.
The violences here feel ripe for extraction. They couldn’t simply flow out of the body, but instead shatter into song and reconfigure themselves outside the blood. It’s a cleansing that feels smooth as steam whistling from the showerhead. Yet this movement away from tension requires active participation. The murk won’t shake off by itself. True faith seems to manifest temperance, that path through the storm instead of full dryness. Even their name draws them back to the journey: My other name Husseina pressed / like a razor to my temple / and I thought to lean into it.
There’s still the lingering question of self-restraint: too close to the skin and you’ll be nicked, too far and you wouldn’t glean much. How do you manage enough intimacy with and distance from the self to be changed? Can the slip into this lesser-used name render a new consciousness? It’s clear that the speaker knows how to shirk expectation to dwell in the honest depths of their uncertainty, but we can still feel the blade-singe a hair away from their skin.
Yet when it comes to the speaker, spiritual renewal isn’t the only concern: Are you / looking to marry? / Why else come home?
Home is a space where one pulls away from the exterior to nest and process their life, so immediately pulling in romantic desire feels unnecessary, especially when the speaker doesn’t seem excited to share their inner planes. Even the baby they miscarried is a hunger to walk the evening with,
a movement that calls them back into personal, instead of communal, depths. Their guilt-fueled stakeout seems to contain an introversion and relies on processing memory and emotion over intimacy with others, yet this ability could be ideal for future outward testimony. They could build a connection over stories. But what is their ambition? Despite this distancing, the speaker seems enamored of the mother: I was at my mother’s / ear while she killed / anything the cock’s / neck in her hand / at 86’s Eid the flesh sacrifice / mutual so many pleasures / guaranteed so nothing beautiful / ends.
I love this idea of pleasure being one long chain that doesn’t snap, but instead draws us back to those that came before.
Isn’t pain, too, like this, the slice sometimes not only a fresh wound, but also phantom? When the mother holds her fingers to the flames to withstand “love’s accretion”, one long burn warms her from the outside in. Love is the emotional wound manifested physically, the brand that’s constantly reheated. Devotion, then, is constant renewal compounding what’s already been dug. Is anyone ready to wade?