Mina’s Story // Heba

Sandozi

I believe that the sky is made of glass. If you look close enough, you can see what goes on in the heavens. That’s what I think happened the day Nazo found me, lying on our front sidewalk unconscious. Before she ran for Kontara and I slipped on the world, I think I looked too close and saw things that weren’t meant to be seen.

The realization came long after the day I fell. It was made over nights staring at hospital walls and burrowed into my brain every time I drew constellations on popcorn ceilings. If I could see through the stars and their night blanket, they’d tell me their secrets about me.

Kuller

The doves call to me from the sky and my own Dove puts her straitjacket arms around me.

I looked too hard at the sky after that day. My family thinks I lost them among the clouds, kites, and marble vomit catchers. They don’t know that I saw them up there. They led me down with forehead kisses and newborn nieces and baby sisters that suck their thumbs. Their names pull me to shore.

As I stare at the horizon after a sleepless night, it’s my thumb sucking Poet who reminds me that there is no happiness in the dawn. That life is too short for a beauty.

And when I finally drop off to sleep, my Awakening kisses me to sleep with the promise that I’ll come back to her. That I won’t lose myself in the stars.

They say I hit my head pretty hard on the way down.

Wheel- Thrown Bowl // Tony Deirssen-Morice