Like Casket Clockwork
By Deema Bteibet
I lose myself watching everyone mourn.
My mother tells me to pray for the 17-year-old boy
who lay, cold and ghostly in the wooden casket
that sits at the front of the empty prayer area.
His girlfriend stands, at the center of everyone’s conversation
with a scarf covering most of her hair.
She was my only friend in third grade
who always asked me with sticky fingers
why I couldn’t have rice crispy treats.
My friend taught me to eat three leaf clovers
that grew on the side of my house
and sealed my mouth
like a zipper to keep the secret.
We flinched like criminals when we heard rustling feet
and froze before we could dust the dirt off our hands.
I lose myself watching everyone mourn.
My mother tells me to pray for the 16-year-old boy
who lay, cold and lonely in the wooden casket
that sits at the front of the full prayer area.
Each family member grieves separately
Among their aunts, uncles, and forgotten family members
who they just found out existed.
I get a crying headache
And in the car on the way home
ask my mother while staring at my knees,
“Can you tell me the order it happens again?”
And she tells me about the angel who smells of
the most beautiful musk that does not exist on earth
and wraps your soul in shrouds
that smell of the perfumes of paradise.
“Who is your lord?
What is your religion?
Who is this man?”
She tells me what she wants me to do after her death
as her glaciated gaze pierces a casket sized hole in the highway,
White knuckles gripping the wheel.
I feel cold and my hands pressed under me
freeze the bottom of my thighs.
I lose myself watching everyone mourn.
My mother tells me to pray for the man
who lay, cold and loved in the wooden casket
that sits at the front of the cramped prayer area.
His wife glued to the floor crippled by sadness,
and crowded by people she’s never met
who steal her fresh air
and pretend they’ve ever cared about her.
But the only one who could comfort her
is currently speaking with Nakir and Munkar.
In the hallway, newly engaged girls talk of white dresses
and heave with the excitement of wedding planning
and starting a new life disregarding the end of another’s.
My friends’ faces swell with blood
and souse in their tears,
all of which I have never seen cry.
They watch the wife from afar and freeze
in the shallowness of her icy gaze and flatline hug.
My hands are rocks that hide in the comfort
of the darkness of my jacket pockets.
She loses herself watching everyone mourn,
her mother tells her to pray for the woman
who lay, cold and void of her burdens, in the wooden casket
at the front of the well-lit prayer area.
She imagines the woman’s favorite memories
aimlessly hanging in the air like spirits,
and picks up the way the woman died from the people
who are supposed to be standing toward the ka`ba
hands in prayer with tears of taqwa drowning their faces.
She watches you stand over your casket looking in,
As you watch your own hands stiffen by your sides for the last time.
Deema Bteibet is a Palestinian-American writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She has work published or forthcoming in Wingless Dreamer and Drunk Monkeys.