Five Things From A Four-Year-Old
BY FATIMA-AYAN MALIKA HIRSI.
1. I’ve done so many buttons at school.
2. Who does the forest belong to?
3. What are your tears made out of?
4. My French teacher’s name is Gemma Pell
5. If you love me then you’ll do what I say.
1.
When I was a teenager my mother loved The White Stripes
My friends said she turned every rock song into opera
At work she was called The Singing Nurse
Her patients clapped in adoration when she entered lonely rooms
They didn’t know she crushed on Jack White
All they knew is that she sang while distributing white pills
I watched her do so much not in her job description
She helped an elder’s shaking hands get the hardest button to button
My daughter is a lifetime away from gorgeous silver hair
and all its potential maladies but still
here we are her trying to get the hardest button to button
insistent she needs no help even when tiny fingers disagree
2.
My mother and my daughter both
love ocean and fear trees
In forests Neela clings to me
worried about bears and the Big Bad Wolf
We live in Canada with Ursus americannus
and Canis lupus down the street
A neighbor with a habit of leaving trash unsecured
often accidentally feeds nursery tale friends
We wake to debris scattered across our yard
We pretend we missed a block party
One day my daughter will be old enough to go to parties
without me I will tell her what my mother told me
Don’t trust anyone
The internet alive with commentary because
most female bodied people would choose to encounter a bear
in forests instead of a man
Men not understanding the point
hold their own comparisons about who they’d prefer meeting
beneath trees
All their hypotheticals still leave them alive
My daughter wants to know about ownership
of the forest I tell her
No one owns the forest
The forest belongs to themself
I tell her No one owns your body
Your body only belongs to you
3.
At 3AM my daughter appears beside our bed
I don’t like being by myself
I can tell her face is wet by her jagged voice
My mother felt the same way lamented an empty nest
as brown eyes swirled
with cataract clouds uncaging rain
4.
No one told me parenting was half grief half comedy half drowning
in seas of love and two-thirds exhaustion
My proportions are off because I failed math four times in college
and left without a degree
In Pennsylvania I was fluent in Spanish
In Texas I forgot how to conjugate verbs
In Canada my daughter learns French while in the place we left
people who never learned compassion say Speak English
When my mother retired her body began collecting ailments
In hospitals nurses saw her hijab and didn’t know
she’d run nurses stations longer than most of them had known how to walk
They assumed she couldn’t Speak English
So much surprise
when she asked pertinent questions
Some days she’d get as far as her front door dressed
shoes the only thing left to slip on body
and she’d choose to stay home I’m not going!
They’ll try to kill you
5.
My daughter tries to teach me about love when she wants something
I did the same to my mother
Mothers learn to be the experts at guilt trips
while young daughters
I tell my mother We love you
We want you to be with us a long time
Please Don’t you want to see your grandchildren grow up?
Guilt for feeling selfish gifting guilt
Some people believe we must try convincing those ready to die
to cling to life and I always disagreed unless
it came to my own mother trying to escape pain
If you love me you’ll do what I say Live
Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is a Black mother who spends time with forests and waters on unceded lands of the T’Sou-ke Nation. Her work strives to instigate action in service to world-building, social change, and collaboration. Her poems live in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, MAYDAY, Torch, Elysium Review, Rise Up Review, and other portals. She is a fellow of the Pink Door Writing Retreat, the Anaphora Arts Writing Residency, In Surreal Life, and Abode Press. Her first full-length poetry collection, DREAMS FOR EARTH, arrived this fall from Deep Vellum. Travel with her at fatimaayanmalikahirsi.com and on Instagram @fatimawritingdoula. She wants you to slash ICE’s tires and join the BDS movement.
“Five Things From A Four-Year-Old” is inspired by "5 Rounds of 5 Things" by Grant Frazier. The first stanza references the song "The Hardest Button to Button" by The White Stripes in italicized lettering.
“Five Things From A Four-Year-Old” is inspired by "5 Rounds of 5 Things" by Grant Frazier. The first stanza references the song "The Hardest Button to Button" by The White Stripes in italicized lettering.