What Makes You Necessary, Or Why I Can’t Live Without Katrina Kaif

Poem by Nada Faris

This is an edited version of the poem that first appeared in Fountain of Youth (Vine Leaves Press, 2016), p: 56–58.

Behind the Plexiglas,
her eyes squeeze the world
in celluloid.

She sells it cheap,
like the marble tiles she advertises
on filming breaks.

A dark blotch of navy in water
colors the entire glass,
dismantling my prowess to invent.

I call my depression Captain Hugh.
He follows me everywhere
in his navy uniform.

Half-smiling, sidelined,
counting the clanging silver on her ankle bracelet.
Why would she know that I exist?

Nameless, exchangeable,
pecking with the rest of her flock on debt.

In private,
drenched
in psilocybin.

It is in the throng of longing that I suddenly find myself.

My heart speaks a foreign tongue now,
for the past month, it said not a word.
But now it beats to background music.

For the love of love,
arrest this moment.
If only accidentally, play along.

Look at me.
Will it kill you to acknowledge my existence?

Hear me whisper in her ear:
“Who cares what they think? I care how you feel.”

Leave out the churning machine
manufacturing my caprice,
riddling me regularly with

love and loss fluxed in spectacles and fetish,
packaged and repackaged in brands
and sold en masse.

Don’t talk about the cast,
idealized protagonist,
melodramatic villain,

comical reprieve,
recycled music,
choreography on a moving train,

and mention not the audience
marveling at her feet
behind the silver screen.

I know what is done to me.
I am a poet willfully conned,
spreading my prayer mat
and addressing God,

“To have met her sooner, that is all I ask.”

Fingers crossed behind my back
that she remains, firmly,
behind the Plexiglas.