A husband’s face
in a Berlin crowd
brings the comfort and
reassurance of
a mother’s face
in a parents crowd:
the familiarity of
a world where
you can be okay.
24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
A husband’s face
in a Berlin crowd
brings the comfort and
reassurance of
a mother’s face
in a parents crowd:
the familiarity of
a world where
you can be okay.
Returning to my homeland
is a phantom limb sensation:
the pain of having been uprooted
from the Nile Delta and confined
into a eighteen inch German pot.
An Egyptian Lotus used to thriving
effortlessly in its habitat but is now
struggling to grow at all.
A cold blackberry
was the love child of our tongues’
embrace in the dark
If you nap under a tree in July
branches will break up the
sky into seven puzzle pieces
and you will keep sleeping
until a woodpecker finally
comes out to collect them
all and drop them one
by one on your stagnant
chest and your heart will
beat seven times
before you become.
Estrangement is
crying on
my kitchen
floor at 11 pm
while scrubbing
the blackness out
of the burnt
German pot
that could not
contain the
deliciousness of
an Egyptian
rice pudding.
My luggage got left behind
for three days in Belgrade.
I will say that I lost sleep
along with all hope
to ever see my things again
and I will not feel bad for
loving my chosen things.
Every item that represents me,
comforts me, smells like me
would either rot in a bag
somewhere or end up on
somebody else’s skin
and lose all recollection
of me.
When my luggage arrived
it was changed. My black sweater
was blacker, my scissors were
sharper, my perfume was
stronger, and my brown bag was
sturdier. All my things were
infused with the intensity of
estranged lovers and the vintage
aroma of flea markets. They have
gone through life and matured
without me. They have a history
that I am not part of and I
love them all the more for it.
Which side of the train
do you to sit on?
Do you sit against
the direction of the
train where trees
are coming at you
and the sky is
pulling you in?
or do you sit with
the direction of the
train where trees
are passing you by
and the sky is
running away?
Whichever side
you choose, save me
a seat on the other side
because I would like
to sit opposite of you
and rest our temples
on the same window
to watch both sides
of the same view.
A line came to me in a dream.
I saw it being written in the air
as though my dream was subtitled.
Every word vanished seconds
after appearing but I woke up
repeating the line anyway.
My body ached with outsideness
or was it outsiderness?
My body ached with outsideness
as I begged to be let in. I do not
remember who I was begging nor
what stood on the other side of
my begging, I only remember
an intense craving for insideness
and the sound of my fists on the door
where my outsideness hung
on me like a cloak.
A sewing needle stood
on our living room carpet
like a headless flower
as I ran barefoot to show
Mama the drawing
I had just finished.
Her eyes followed my fingers
along the drawing but
she didn’t hear anything
I said because she was panicking
about the trail of blood on the floor
and wondering where it came from.
She tried to pick the needle out
of my heel but it had broken into
two halves: one lay bloody
on the carpet and the other
nested in my heel.
In the emergency room
I lie on a white sanitized
bed and three people
stand at my feet but
I can’t see what they’re doing
from behind the Xray image
of my foot that Mama
planted in front of my face
to shield me from the sight of
three old men digging in my heel.
She put on her storytelling voice
and if I had closed my eyes I could
have been in my bed at home and
her voice could have been coming
from the chair where she sat in the
hallway so the story would reach both
the girls’s and the boy’s room.
I followed her fingers along the image,
but I didn’t hear anything she said
because I was panicking about
my drawing back home
and wondering if it was
spoiled by blood stains.
I went home to my drawing
with a bandaged foot and
a needle that found a home
in my heel while Mama
searched our home for the
other half of the needle
but could not find it.
From that day on
every time I got pins
and needles from sitting
on the floor bent over a book
I would think the mutilated
needle is longing for her
other half and I
would gently pat my heel
until the needle is soothed.
A leaf floated
on the surface of
the four day old water
in the vase while
a wilting red rose,
not knowing that in her
grief lies her demise,
bent her head in
mourning of the offspring
lowered into its liquid grave.
The deadly green hue
stared back at me
from behind the cadaverous glass
as I willed myself
to turn away before
I, too, catch my decay.