i touched another
ocean today, love—let it
filter between my nail
-bed shorelines & its
sediment stuck, stubborn,
the way a lover’s residue
stains & warms the wrong
man’s bare skin—

*

i want to tell you
of a borderless love
i found you at the intersection
of 5 countries, horizons
effervescent & bleeding
into each other
here, there is enough
history for the both
of us, lovers landlocked
& gasping, i mean to say,
what is love if not
an intertwining
of bloodlines?

*

i left my heart
in a sea-glass sepulture
& called it home, fell
in love with the brief
resurrection of it all—
the shatter & echo of
an empty tomb God left us
in—have you heard the good
news? have you seen your savior
in the streets today—empty
palmed & bleeding?

*

i don’t have trouble
with commitment—i just
don’t know when i’ll find
love again, so here i am:
caught between two
lands not country enough
to be home & neither
could ever love
me back—

*

Love—
do not tell me
of the bodies
you parted
to get here,
i know men
get lost
in the wholeness
of you & forget
the histories
& the bodies
you swallowed
to pave
your ivory—

*

you are not
the God i pray to
nor the mountain
& temples that robbed
Him of his history—
neither barbed-wire
eyebrow or cement jawline,
yours is a separation
unwritten, undressed—

paradise stolen—
paradise reclaimed—

*

& what of the breathless
martyrs—the ones who
tasted & trusted your waters
before it filled their lungs?

once, a lover asked,
“how do you see the ocean?”
& i meant to say, “i don’t”
or “only home”—
i meant to say,
isn’t living
for your country
just a slower way
to die?

This poem appeared in We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck and published by Persea Books.