trigger warning: mention of cat deaths (and death in general)
Dear whomever,
It is 8:00AM and I am late for work - I’ve been snoozing again, over and over. I want to do better, but the fog has fallen over me, dark and murky. You can’t fight things like this. You must simply let them pass.
We have to park in an empty lot about three minutes from the building. You must navigate a short cliff, that I assume in the winter will be mud, and laying atop of it is a black and white cat, strewn over a small ant hill, facedown, dead. This cat appeared three days ago and at first glance I’d assumed it was asleep. Such a peaceful position, I can’t help but wonder about its last moments. I hope they were kind, those final steps.
Death has been following me around.
The cat I rescued gave birth to only one live kitten. Upon reaching home I found the second dead, and then watched the mother cat contract and push for a few hours before realizing something was wrong. One kitten got stuck in her birth canal, and a C-section produced four dead ones, asleep forever, embalmed in amniotic sac.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I won a writing competition for a short story - one that followed a main character who attempts suicide, and survives. I won first place, and the prize was a beautiful pen inscribed with my name AMAL KISWANI in gold.
I lost it.
11:00PM. I’m walking around my neighborhood for the first time in what feels like forever, and here the words began, my letter to you drafting itself as I turned the familiar streets. I stopped at the supermarket, bought a pack of cigarettes, and lit one in the cold of night. The last time I went for a walk was around this time last year, when I was trying to find my footing in what felt like a career that was eating me whole. It’s the same dance: the cigarette, the sweater, the unsurmountable loneliness accompanied by such a heavy feeling.
Death has been following me around.
Like I’ve told you before, the art of a cigarette is that it takes its time. It kills you slowly, moreso like a gamble than anything else. I’ve been waking and sleeping these days with only one thought, repeating itself over and over again: I feel empty.
I feel empty.
I feel empty.
The smoke fills me just enough.
I’d never thought I was a winter girl, but have realized I have a soft spot for Amman’s cold air. Maybe the summer roasted me just enough to enjoy the breeze. Whatever the answer is, and despite the heaviness I feel, I do quite enjoy this moment fully, completely. The wind brings me to life, the trees waving as if trying to wake me from the nightmare I’m in.
Me and death. Death and me. When things get bad in my head, it’s all I can think about. When I close my eyes I see the image of the dead stillborn kitten, eyes to never open. The way I wrapped it in tissues and set it in a shoebox, the way I sat next to the birthing mother for hours, her silence and endurance only causing me to cry out. She would purr, despite. She would look at me with green eyes so full of trust but I’d already betrayed her, in a way. Oh, she is such a quiet thing, it breaks my heart.
“Have you never seen anyone give birth?” the voice on the phone asked me. “Of course she looks tired.”
I never have, actually, I realized, in my blood-stained kitchen. I don’t know what it is about that realization that haunts me still.
“But she looks so tired - I feel like somethings wrong.”
“She’s giving birth!”
I bought a pack that day. Swallowed them like candy. Checked on her every five minutes. Smoked every ten. They said wait and I did. I shouldn’t have. When I look at my lips now I see the same darkened color of red my uncles have from years of smoking. I have the same dark under-eyes, from years of exhaustion.
I’m still not a smoker, but I know you won’t believe me. I can easily go days without any, but the act of it is so easy, so simple. Since the last time I wrote about cigarette-smoking I have not purchased my own pack. I’ve stolen from here and there to keep conversations going. I like the easy excuse of it all - you can walk off your desk at work, I need a cigarette, sit in the staircase and just watch the paper slowly turn to ash. You can converse with coworkers, a lit one between you. Something about connection. Something about fear.
It’s Jordan, after all.
My dad died before I could form memories. These days, I miss my family. It’s not overwhelming, but a slow-drip of a faucet that won’t ever close correctly. I have chosen the path less taken but I can never take steps forward with any confidence. Yes, I’m disappointed.
Mom cat scratched the hell out of me in her fear over my boy cat getting too close to the door that divides them. I moved my leg to keep her away from him, and got caught in the commotion. This was the action that undid me. I fell to the floor and just cried, not out of pain, but out of pure exhaustion.
I am exhausted.
Crying is release. When my mom would cry we’d all get worried, but she’d assure us: “This means it’s over. This means it’s out.”
Death has been following me around.
I bled all over my new sheets and didn’t think to check the cuts for infections until I started limping.
The fog was on me, blinding me. Forgive me, body, but I knew no better. It was hard to rise, hard to see the sun, shining. Hard to comprehend the pain until it was inconceivable.
Did you know Jordan doesn’t sell rabies shots? They are not available in private hospitals. Imagine my surprise when the nurse told me it would cost 350JD but the government doesn’t allow it. Something about that is good. Everything about that is good, in this retched country that everyone hates.
At the public hospital, I listened to various cries, watched people pass me on gurneys, and kept checking to see if their chests were rising and falling. I sat with my bestfriend, dressed in a bright red, the only color around me. I was scared but her smile kept me moving.
A cigarette after. Of course, what else? The seductive cigarette, giving you an excuse to breathe out. A meditation, if you will. How stupid. How undeniably masochistic. What a stupid pastime I have allowed into my life. But where else do you find release when you’re like me, moving through this grief?
If you’re just unlucky enough you’ll be born with grief. Something about DNA. Something about genetics. I was born with grief, the ugly duckling, cursed with unsurmountable sadness. They call this sensitivity, they do, and if you’re even more unlucky, those you love will trade the word for childish.
Death has been following me around.
We share cigarettes on my late-night walks. If anything, he only comes to me when I’m lost, making connections to past memories only like a writer can. Death is a friend of mine, really. To a writer, everything is something else, and to me, everything is everything else. It’s good to be reminded of endings.
I’m a child, I am. Cursed with a sensitivity that kills me slowly. At least the cigarette has a physicality I cannot deny - at least I can touch it, unlike these feelings, which are invisible to me.
But there she is, bright red and giggly, reminding me there is light at the end of the road. And there he is, real and honest, reminding me there is something coming that will finally solidify my place in the world.
Until then,
my name means hope, and I’ll keep hoping.
With love,
Amal
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This was cinematic and so moving