Call to Masturbation

[Image description: close-up photograph of a single droplet of viscous liquid hanging from the edge of a container.]

Dino Giordano / Creative Commons

there is a hadith buried somewhere deep 

in the torn abandoned crevices of your dusty Quran. 

this hadith calls to you, begs for you, and moans for you

from the sulky corner of your dorm room each fortnight.

"a man who truly loves a woman will choose her for

beauty, luck, charm, wealth, and above all

dignity."

but it's 3 am

and your sticky fingers barely spread apart

from the spoiled orgasm of tonight's late-night porn binge

and last night's broken fast. 

you see it's 3 am before suhoor

and your breasts are flopping

and your clitoris is throbbing

and there is

nothing dignified

about your heavy brown breaths

and syncopated sighs. 

in fact at 3 am there is nothing dignified about manless pleasure

or giving the performance of your life to a row of crumpled pillows

and tossed sheets

who cradle you the way an imam's voice once did.

at 3 am love exists within self-inflicted fingerprints

all over your lonely mounds of subsaharan sugar cane

raw and unrefined from the absence

of a so called

dignified

man. 

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Fatima Shakur is a Sudanese American writer, born and raised in Chicago. She is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in creative writing and comparative race studies at the University of Chicago. Send love (or hate) to Fatima via her Instagram.