‍                                                                                                                        holding pattern:
                                                                                                              After Manahil Bandukwala

‍                                                                                                                                         “I hold you the way astronomers draw constellations
                                                                                                                                                              for each other in the markets of wisdom.”                                                                                                                                                                                                       — Michael Ondaatje

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                                                            i hold you like a slingshot in front of a rifle: i hold you somewhere between seasons: i                                              hold you (open mouthed, at the foot of forgiveness): i hold your hand like a stone hurled at a
                                             wall: a rupturing intimacy: i hold time against you: i hold you accountable for the future: i hold
                                             you against the knife of my collarbone, where my grief lives: i hold you like a spout of spray
                                             paint in cairo: lotus bloom after eternal winter: i am holding my breath, awaiting the day you
                                             exile me from your lips: so i hold you at gunpoint by song: a mutilated oud impregnated by its
                                             anthem: i hold your fingers and i imagine myself as a weapon: ready to be fashioned to your
                                             violence: you drape my leg across yours (switch cities) and i hold still in the wake of your kiss: i
                                             hold you and construct lost media for you: i hold you in an obscured archive woven in my sleep:
                                             i hold my tongue but, still, the love leaks out: i hold you up to the light: a refraction: an opaline
                                             promise: i hold your frayed laughter like claws on a telephone cord: i hold you awaiting shock: i
                                             get a hold of you through the glitches in timespace: i hold the promise of us like a pamphlet in
                                             the hands of a revolutionary: like prayer beads in the hands of a sinner: the world holds me
                                             hostage to your myth & for you, i hold out hope for the world while it haemorrhages—

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                                                                                خمرة الحب¹

                                                               -------
                                                               ¹_{Meaning: the spirit of love}

                                                                                    _{Translation: Drink from my love / until you are watered by my fire /
                                                                                    until you drink* — I mean remember me — by my name}

                                                                                    _{*in Arabic, the word for becoming drunk and remembering is one letter
                                                                                     apart [تسكر v. تذكر] — a distinction obfuscated by many spoken dialects.
                                                                                     the word ذكر at once can mean to remember and to mention, a word often used
                                                                                     in reference to the recitation of the 99 names of God — seemingly a direct
                                                                                     juxtaposition to the act of drinking alcohol in Islam. This poem follows the
                                                                                     tradition of many muwashshah [موشح] songs of the Andalusian period, written
                                                                                     under the Sufetic practice of naming synonymy between ascetic devotion and
                                                                                     mortal romance, both of which can be found at the bottom of a glass.}

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