How long did the power-cut last?

The face came unglued like shrink-wrap.

Then, the eyes pulled down like Roman blinds,

each socket plugged with the ether,

the heart a urinal of the Devil’s piss.

My father's head bobbed over me;

a switched lantern,

a cloud of lymph and argon.

His light hurt me as a fly hurts a wraith.

How do I turn it off?

I felt exposed,

exposed like a plucked goose

and ashamed of being alive,

trussed up and skewered

with needles and tubes.

How long did the power-cut last?

The following morning lurched through my window,

belching its light in my face,

watching me vomit my heart out.

The nurses came and, one by one,

ironed out the kinks in my mind,

pumped the flat tires sagging in my chest.

Wasn’t that enough?

Surgeons came too and sifted out

the ether from my eyes,

unbuckled me from death's crotch.

Wasn’t that enough?

No. No. They had to pull God from me as well

like thread from a bobbin.

They had to transplant my demons

into a small, stainless tray,

weld me to air and light,

to air and light.

It’s just routine, they said.

Just routine, eh?

So, this is life, I gather; this constant dying.

Perhaps, some deaths are no more than flings;

they stop midway.

O father, I am not the same woman from a while ago.

I am only a stand-in for my old self,

a sort of understudy,

a memento mori of the person I was.

I am only twenty minutes away

from hell

or heaven

or the pit-stop in between.

Hajer Requiq is an emerging female poet from Tunisia, who holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sfax. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Lunch Ticket, Northern New England Review, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. She currently works as an ELT teacher in the coastal town of Ksour Essef, Mahdia.