the martyr, the moor, in the madrasah

We are flying over Tigray, the mountains make my mouth more dry than the plane, I am left agape for so long. Speak to me in tongues. Tell me where the cracks are. Take your grass razors over the earth. Reveal that she is, underneath, brown skinned and never static and dotted with the perilous dwellings of temporary inhabitants.

I took my anger out on an airport official rooting through my things, my small and insignificant things. The more I spoke the more I softened, the more my anger became a game and she smiled and I saw the God in her. We parted ways as friends.

I am grateful in a plastic sheath, left out in the rain. I am seeing but with all the dots blurring into anger and sometimes softness and often I am cold. No one picks me up, not even to put me in the bin.

I need more poetry from you, I’d like to give you some of mine. I am full of the love you have stuffed in my mouth, I am unable to give you anything comprehensible. I am stumbling over myself and writing elegies to the loves I am actively losing and I am yet to be shown the door.

Home is the lemon tree as an answer. Dear Kaveh Akbar, you and simile are engaged in the final dance. Who spins who first? The martyr, the moor, in the madrasah. Turning the pages of me.

Set me down, let me have a drink, let me weep in a corner and spill into you. I am showing my lifeboat to strangers.

- TC