by Samina Hadi-Tabassum

I

Every night around 2 AM
Starting in early May
My son began sleepwalking

He climbed out of bed
And walked into our room
Where we lay awake waiting for him

Pointing to the same spot on the ceiling
He would scream and shout
“I told you not to do it! I told you.”

Staring at this chimera we wondered
What was haunting him at night
What slippage from the day was this

Soothing him back to sleep
We tucked our eight-year-old son
Back into his bed each night

A month goes by and soon he starts to cry
From the exhaustion of the warm school days
From the dizzying spells while climbing stairs

It was the dark blood in the vials weeks later
And the jagged blue veins across his arms
Where we find the cancer lurking inside him

What we imagined one day to find within us
Lay inside his skinny legs and his tiny arms instead
Churning and blasting out uncontrollably in spindles

Endless nights in the hospital start to bleed together
Chemo in tubes and pills and spinal taps
Spill painfully into our unbound son

With delirium he tears at his hair
Knowing one day it will be gone
Only to be quieted by the silence

That plagues the oncology ward
Where the innocent
Wonder why

II

I am his mother I tell him
And will stay by his side forever
But he questions me anyway
Wondering whether I too will die

I reassure him that he will live a long life
That he will become stronger from this
A memory that will get lost within him
Tucked away in the vestiges of childhood

The long tubes and wires poke though the robe
Attached to the folds of skin with translucent tape
Against the sound of the Disney channel above
He tries to sleep through the laughter on screen

The chatter of the night nurses outside comforts me
But inside the fear slowly envelops each night
When the red light stays on and the world becomes dark
I lay still listening to the air that waltzes out of my son

Scrolling through the TV after he falls asleep
The nocturnal images of the caged migrant children
Under silver blankets like peculiar pods
Startles me from my despair one night

Children without their mothers at their bedside
Children living in another misery similar to my own
Children crying from a painful hunger inside
Wondering where the Gods have gone

With delirium they cry inconsolably
Not knowing where their mothers have gone
Only to be quieted by the silence

That plagues the detention centers
Where the innocent
Wonder why
 
 

About the Author
Samina Hadi-Tabassum is an associate clinical professor at the Erikson Institute in Chicago. Her first book of poems, Muslim Melancholia (2017), was published by Red Mountain Press. She has published poems in East Lit Journal, Soul-Lit, Journal of Postcolonial Literature, Papercuts, The Waggle, Indian Review, Classical Poets, Mosaic, Main Street Rag and These Fragile Lilacs. Her poems were performed on stage as a part of the Kundiman Foundation and Emotive Fruition event focusing on Asian American poetry.

For more information: Samina Hadi-Tabassum