how to miss a place you’ve never been (diaspora blues)
- talk to your father. listen to the anger beneath his words.
listen to him miss a place he’s never been.
learn: this is what it sounds like.
- read about the bodies in the place you’ve never been.
read their joy and the way
they try to walk like free people
through borders between the streets,
walls through the aching chambers of their hearts.
feel the borders in your streets. feel the walls inside your heart.
- eat a piece of baklava. taste every flake of honey,
feel every nut between your teeth,
fitting in the cracks,
surviving between mountains of bone.
taste the layers.
this is what it tastes like to be in the place you’ve never been.
- name it.
keep naming it,
and as you keep naming it make it more specific.
shrink it.
pinpoint.
name it: palestine.
name it: hebron in colonized, al khalil in truth.
name it: that building on that street.
name it: home.
- learn the language of the place you’ve never been.
taste the words on your tongue.
do they taste like honey?
do they taste like baklava?
are they stuck between your teeth?
do they taste like anger?
do they taste like home?
min wen inta?
inta min palestine?
min wen inta:
where
are you from?
- don’t try.
you don’t
have to.
you will feel it.
you will have felt it your whole life
that something is missing,
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that you are renting,
that you will never be able to buy.
that the ache in your chest has a name-
name it.
name it palestine.
name it al khalil.
name it that building on that street,
name it that smile on that face,
name it that word from that tongue,
name it that dirt on your tongue,
name it that feeling in that heart,
name it your heart.
name it your place.
name it home.
palestinian morning after
in desert sunlight even brown boys feel divine. even, yes,
with olive pits between our teeth.
yes, even as my fingers believe they must be roots.
geography makes historians of our feet; in the morning,
i will remove the blanket from my legs and slip
quietly away. as i do. as we do.
where does my body go when i’m asleep? perhaps it flies
across the world, can linger anywhere it likes: perhaps the air
contains no checkpoints. perhaps the air contains no roadblocks.
even, yes, my grandfather’s home. yes, even
the absence we call motherland. even every village and every
uncultivated grove. even the negative space we call country.
the soles of my feet make poor historians.
they cannot seem to learn
the proper names to call the ground they kiss.
even, yes, as skies are orange. even as sunlight
leaches away like
melting ice. yes even as it dwindles.
this impossible unity, delicate
as varicose veins, delicate as a peace accord. it is your breath,
sweet, filling my ear. it is
a miracle,
this belonging i find in my secret morning.
slipping quietly away, stepping outside to the clouds parting
this sudden feeling of sunlight on my skin,
this feeling of being
divine.