Witness

Abstract

Witness S.M. Badawi (bio) We found God in a tree. A boy hungon silk cotton, hummed a tune about motherfuckers & lovely ladies: youthed mouthclamoring, expectant. I remember the climbafter him. How limbs shook as vines mappedtheir way up the trunk, fat leaves darkeningroots below. In the sway, the boy startedto chant. He didn’t know the words but he knewhow to say them, prayed away the diseaseof doubt. He pushed me & he kept on praying& God found him a shadow damnedto darkness. When I fell I found Godin my teeth. I gaped red up at the boy who etchedWitness onto the tree, the W sunk deepestin the wood. He later became a doctor, found Godagain stitching a girl’s lip, two stitches, the lengthof Adam’s first incision. First Do No Harmbut he had already harmed. Smudged his shadowonto the salty seam as if to anoint the sickwith his mercy. Sometimes mercy is enough& sometimes it isn’t. The opposite of mercyis cruelty. The doctor was commanded to saveso he tugged hard on the suture, signed Witnesson her chart to notarize the blood. Witnessto the wound. Witness to the tree. Witnessto the God who commanded, Bleed, & so we bled. [End Page 18] S.M. Badawi S.M. Badawi is an Arab American writer and teacher whose words appear in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Diode, Orange Blossom Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Find her on twitter @smbadawi. Copyright © 2022 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents