A poem on paper planes

And a mini rant on writing the same things again and again

paper plane

my dad taught us how to fold one on his old desk, 

which creaked every time we creased. I think it

was trying to warn us to be careful. I was always 

careful when it came to origami. all corners perfectly 

aligned, all sides creased sharper than paper cuts, 

& most importantly, because we always used scrap 

paper, I knew which side to start with so that the top 

of the plane would be like untouched snow. but the side 

that smelled of printer ink would always be hidden. 

competing with my siblings in the living room meant 

that the carpets & sofas crinkled of dead paper planes, 

except I don't remember anything dying that day. I didn't 

realize that love finds its way even in between the folds

of a piece of paper. but then one summer night before eid, 

I tilted the sofa away from the wall, like slowly opening a door 

in a video game, with my broom as a weapon,

unsure of what armed enemy could attack. 

there it was, the other side.

a plane wreckage. lathered in dust

& the gravity of the past. zero survivors. 

maybe I was never careful enough. 

This month I challenged myself to write as many poems as I can. It's been a little more than 2 weeks of January and this is my 8th poem. It is not the best of the 8, and I do hope to share them soon. but I am so tired sometimes of writing about the same things over and over again. You think you're trying to cure yourself by writing and then you end up feeling so much it actually drills a hole in your heart. A common theme in most of my poems and even essays is memory, childhood, which is really ironic because I'm still a teen. I am so nostalgic for something that wasn't even that long ago. I don't know how nostalgia would feel later on in the future. I'm just 17 and thinking of how my life was 10 years ago, of which I barely even remember by the way. Sometimes I feel like I write so much about my childhood and memory in general, because I am so scared of forgetting. I don't even remember most of my childhood, of course, like any other person, but I don't want to lose what I have. So I write to remember. Like I was remembering the first time my dad taught us how to make a paper plane, probably my mom was sleeping after a night shift. And I remembered that old desk of his, chipped wood, pen marks, and how it creaked so much, but my dad never changed it until later on because it was his first desk in this country. See I wouldn't remember this unless I specifically think of writing it. And it drives me crazy how much of my childhood I don't remember, and on one random Saturday a memory will fire like a spark. A super mundane one too. And then I think of this:

This is @ fleurentcue on Instagram, he has the same handle on substack, check him out!!

So maybe I am liberating myself again, and again, and again. Maybe one day I will write to forget instead of writing to remember.

love,

afifa