Disguised as God
By: Ahmed Shareef
Sometimes God comes to earth disguised
as me, we both tremble at the man
throwing rocks together in the shape of a
cross by the side of the street, telling him
this is not me.
I would have been at the hospital, during
the birth of my father, wrapping the
umbilical cord around his throat, like
declining an invitation.
My mother told me, “you belong to the
world, you animal.” and I decline it.
How could I be disguised as God when the
strangers on the streets are almost open
mouthed? without saying anything?
The apartment complex where I am
currently staying like a honeycomb, filled
with beasts, my bags in the corner
accumulating dust.
If my mother ate her placenta I would’ve
been a better child, clamoring at her
breast for more working brain cells.
Friday night, I walk by a phone booth, and
it rang, I think it is my father telling me to
look both ways before I cross the street,
but I decline it in the glass box.
You are as beautiful as worms eating
flesh, cleaning the bones one by one.
Mice chew their way into the house, they
leave their pebbles of shit on the pillows we
sleep on happily, you and I.
The night devours daylight and I count the
days we’ve been together with tally marks
on the wall.
You will outlive my father and mother if
we’re lucky, and the air softens, I will rake
your hair when I don’t visit their graves.
Do you ever think about how the sky has
no windows? and god will not open a
grand one ever to say hello?
I am not my favorite immigrant.
If I lose my place in this country, in order to
have me back, you have to drive through
my family’s house.
My mental illness is always in the
backseat like a killer with a plastic bag.
We cannot afford certain shoes, with
certain soles, but one day I will buy you a
house, and we will walk around the block
in affordable ones.
When god is disguised as me, he tells me
nature is you, and I tell him who are you
kidding? How is the forest just as beautiful
as me?
Darling, when you breathe in the cold,
white birds come out.
In this part of town, every room is not safe,
even on the second and third floors, but
there are recycling bins and libraries here,
why do you all call this place the “hood,”
my God?
In fancy neighborhoods, they hit me like a
bullseye, my God.
I want to feed apples to horses through
fences in the countryside one day, I have
not even been to a pumpkin patch yet.
I name the trees before I touch them here
in the city, they’re already disrespected.
I know the difference between an oak tree
and a maple tree outside those fancy
houses, the owners can’t say the same,
why are they there when that should be
me, my God?
I have walked past those trees every day
on my walks and none of their children are
climbing them.
I would be like a ladybug, all over those
trees.
Wandering through a dark alley, holding
my right hand, God’s hand, bejeweled in dew,
asking him “can either of us ever go back
to the way we were?”
Ahmed Shareef, 26, is a writer, mental health advocate, and polylinguist currently studying Science at Portland Statue University. His poetry draws from his study of contemporary immigrant writers and transnational poetics. Shareef is working on a manuscript about his experience growing up queer in the Middle East and immigrating to the U.S. as a teenager titled ‘I Have Made Fear Gorgeous.’