I can’t explain this longing for being quiet and driving.

certainty is bought with dates,
a bartered happiness
in a chewy and unstable market.

arabic

Here are arabic words
I cannot make sense of.
The nomenclature of a heart
not buried yet, but drowning
in bouts of forgetfulness.

I can write his name in arabic,
a few married curved lines.
I can read them close to one another
and translate them: a chosen one.

Here is love in arabic. Its foreign
letters invade my throat.

I dreamt I fell asleep in the library, fourth floor where we go to pray sometimes. Fajr time, because I had a paper due that morning and I couldn’t get much work done at home. I fell asleep on my prayer mat, it was warm. Then you came to pray, too. And you woke me up.

bald poetry

My professor today
wondered why he
had hair reading my first stanza
but none after the second.

I suppose he ripped it out,
exasperated at my use of metaphor
in all the wrong places and how my commas
were, misplaced.

He was the bald professor with a beard,
but what a shame – he shaved it,
and now he’s my bald professor
with a bald chin, too.

monday weddings

I came home tonight, exhausted from a friend’s wedding. (My mom says she wishes it was mine.)

The bride was late to arrive, it was almost midnight when she drifted in. In her glory of a red suit with jewelry dangling from every place possible – rusted gold on her wrists and forehead. A shower of flower petals – she is young and holds the hand of her embarrassed fledgling husband.

She came in with the snow, the first snow of winter. The flakes of her are light and cold and from some far off place. She drifts into the cracks and crevices of his heart.

The anatomy of Monday weddings: mango ice cream and a headache

punctuate me

(I’m using punctuation to stop my heart on sentences that mean nothing to me.)

I was thinking just now, can I just leave? Leave it all, start again somewhere, somewhere else. Somewhere not here. Photos of chubby child me, embarrassed to be caught and stopped, a punctuation of time. But you know, I was happy then.

This is for you, the love of this place – a ground, a sitting place, nothing more. I’m rebuilding this heart on shaky grounds. I attempt to hide from the pain that seems to have stapled itself to the hem of my skirt.

an offer

I built this glory on weak foundations. I am waiting for a slight wind, a slight cut in the roots of my soul, so this life can return to its ruins.

I am offered boxed bandages to help rebuild.

retreat

My stomach is full of cake,
tasteless fluff at half
past three.
Solutions suggested,
opinions and attitudes ripped
apart by carbohydrates
in my acidic belly.

Fruits in the centre, centre
of my soul, fruity ripe
and near to rotting, near, oh near
to being spoiled,
glazed over with some
syrupy secrets, whispered waywards,
words retreat to plastic
forks and styrofoam plates
bitten into -
I thought it was
cake.