Sarah Mohammed
Grades 9-10 Honorable Mention

Abstain
My mother named me Fathima
meaning to abstain in Arabic.
Which is to say I was born

to not want this: you, peeling my body like a peach baked
in the sunlight. Red and soft.

Too sticky. Juices spilling
from your mouth. In another world, we are born from

wet leaves and dirt, so ripe deer pluck our bodies
from the earth like children

and know not to use
their teeth. We are so beautiful we give life

to other bodies. I imagine that, here, there are no
fruits birthed before us,

no generations turning
away, covering their ears.
We dance to no sound

but our own.
I want to be secret
for a little while.

To call someplace
with you inside it home- land. To sleep in a bed big

enough for the two of us. When you bring
your lips to mine

I am reminded of the oyster
shells my mother and I used to find on the shores

of our fishing village.

We would carry them home gently like rosaries. I hear

my mother’s voice from last year, brimming with salt.
Good Muslim daughter

would never leave India.
Your hands on my thighs, eyes pearling. From the four-paned

window across your bed
the statue of liberty’s face slicked like a road.

I abandon my mother
in so many ways: tongue fisting English vowels like pulp, hijab

pulled down. Your arms splayed out like a splash of milk—
I could never be that white.

Listen. I was born to abstain, to fold my hips
into themselves and keep

them there. But I’ve left
my birth home, left my mother.
You fill my body

until I feel holy enough to do anything. Call me something
else, I plead. Tonight, I escape

my name. We hold
the moon to our faces like a pillow and sleep

in front of the light.
I will not abstain here. I will not.