I grew up and forgot to forget

Author's name: Buthaina Al-Essa

Bothaina says: They always told me: You grow up and forget. When I fell and split my eyebrow, when my math teacher made me stand facing the wall because I forgot that 7 x 6 = 42, when my bike broke and they wouldn’t buy me another one so I wouldn’t break it. When the bottle of my soul broke, when my parents died, when I didn’t die, when the world was too big and I was alone, when my brother slaughtered my doll because Barbie was haram and he deleted the Spacetoon channel because Pokemon was haram. When he took the picture of my mom and dad out of the frame and buried it in the broken drawer so it wouldn’t ward off the angels… When the cracks in the walls filled with demons, when I was forced to enter a girls’ college, to preserve my chastity. When he proposed to his friend, to preserve my chastity. When I tore up the covers of my books to protect them from being burned. When I wrote my first poem under a box of Kleenex, trembling with fear when he pulled my headscarf on my first poetic morning... When he finally slapped me, they all told me: You'll grow up and forget. The problem is that I grew up and didn't forget. I grew up and forgot to forget.