God is Breaking Up With Me

I am newly interested in taking
care of my health because my father
died suddenly. My friends judge

the scientist who is obsessed with reaching
immortality. Kind of the opposite of wanting
to reach god. I join their laughter and do not

confess that if I could, I—too—would become
immortal. Live on this wretched earth as if
it was always my earth.

God’s name hung on my neck for five
years, carved in the sun-shaped gold pendant.
At the gym, I suddenly realized my neck was weightless.

At once light and heavy—as people say.
Everybody is interested in breaking
up with me.

Younis and I are talking about meaning-
making through every single thing.
Let birds be birds, I say, thinking of a poem

and knowing that’s not what the poem says.
I confess it has made my life difficult.
I tie black threads around my friends’ wrists,

telling them of its significance. That I got it
at the shrine of Latif—Sindh’s Sufi mystic poet.
Wish for anything, I tell them. It’ll unspool

as your wish comes true. Come dawn, I will
leave the city. In the early hours, nobody to say
goodbye to. But the birds, the birds.