Sadiqa De Meijer: Red-Eye
Dear country, did you wait for me?
Did you halt yellow trains as they vipered the engineered rural,
did you quiet currents, letting duckweed
slowly lock the waters—have you been a grand museum
of immobile waterfowl and ruminants, flies
on their nostrils, millipede life under leaf rot,
stock still—where it rained, did glass drops hover
in a splintered universe of damp,
dear land, when I dropped the spindle, did you pull the main?
Did you freeze in the air the motions of bicyclists, hooligans,
vendors, classroom chalk scraping in cursive,
past imperfect—was there a static silence
on all radios?
Sunrise. Here is that private sea scrolling in,
typing you an endless letter. The plane makes its fluid, plummeting turn,
and my window fills with land. Here is the clay
that holds the brittle calcium of them who made me, have they waited—
because I waited for you, in my blind and percolating marrow
all the years I waited, sleepwalking, speaking a daft language flawlessly.
Now the roads are ribbons, and the cars begin to crawl,
and I would like to rise with you, I’d like to be so awake.
I’ve drunk repeated coffees from a small and unbreakable cup
that a child might use to serve tea to a wiry monkey
and a one-eyed bear. But I have left
her in another country, sleeping.
And my hands shake.
Discussion Questions
What images, quotes, or themes stood out to you in this poem? Why? What does this poem suggest about identity and belonging (or not belonging) to a place?
@sadiqademeijer has written about this poem: “All our old selves persist inside of us in some way.” How do you interpret this line? How does this inform your understanding of the experiences of immigrants/refugees/newcomers?
What lessons can we draw from this piece in order to foster a culturally safe environment in healthcare settings and beyond?
Reflections from #MedHumChat
“To me, time stood out. How everything is frozen in time, and then the sentence "have they waited— because I waited for you". And then the image of sleep, sleepwalking, waking up, coffee. Time is distorted during sleep, and everything feels unreal.” —@OdyO11
“I love the longing for stillness, for time stopped in our absence. When we leave a place, our paths diverge - we change, the place changes - we no longer change together. For me, that divergence has always been a source of both discovery and discomfort.” —@KamnaBalharaMD
“I very much believe this. That each of us is an accumulation. That we each are continually emerging from all our experiences, good and bad. I cannot assume that anyone else is in the same state exactly.” —@AMLeahy
“When we meet immigrant patients, let's remind ourselves to be curious about the stories they carry and sensitive to the particular challenges they face, taking care not to make assumptions about what those stories and challenges might be.” —@anoushkaasinha
About this #MedHumChat
“Red-Eye” was paired with an excerpt from “The Namesake,” a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri for a #MedHumChat on July 1, 2020 on Humanizing the Experience of Migrants.
The pieces for this chat, along with the discussion questions, were selected by Ashna Asim (@AshnaAsim) and Sadiqa de Meijer (@sadiqademeijer).
We were honored to host Sadiqa de Meijer, the author of this piece, as a special guest for this discussion.
About the Author
Sadiqa de Meijer is an author and poet with multicultural roots who was born in Amsterdam and as a child moved to Kenya and eventually Canada. Her works explore a range of topics including identity, language, motherhood, and illness. Read more about her in this interview with Maisonneuve Magazine.