* passport to the uncanney valley: a resting wantingness to exist anywhere but inside of a body * the heart is an east facing window in front of two chairs but we loiter outside its door on a stoop under a palm tree twisting up into the purple witching hour of night the rats make love up there the branches shudder the leaves fall we shiver we laugh no one believes us * lipstick staining the denim is everything i feel for you * the oracles in our algorithms are correct when they sing everything is everything the oracles in our lineages are looking out when they hymnal in the wrist inshallah bismallah subhanallah if you remove the binding from a bible it becomes a deck of cards if you tilt your head the hilal is an eye closed a mouth waiting our god a tongue double knotting a cherry stem what is meant to be will be allah yomhel wala yohmel * fog is the magic i ask for though I often don’t recognize it as such when i see it too close to the ground too busy reminiscing abt luving you from inside a cloud up in the sky where else would a cloud be well funny you should ask the answer is statistically inside my haunted steamtrunk head * i am an empowered woman but your body next to mine makes me feel safe and small in a good way even though i am 5’11” and always the tallest in a hug only the moon has ever been taller than me but when we untangle i look up at you too * it’s the end of the world so i should do something but what this flood this flood is slowly rising up swallowing the ground beneath my feet tell me how anybody thinks under this condition * my americanness is not americana and neither is yours too many things to leave at the door we both have keys for your arabic is different than my arabic but we have the qamar in common at the front of our minds a steady light * purple grapes and monkey bars frankincense and myrrh double apple and mint * a loupe to my left ventricle would reveal a 26 year old game of doubledutch and a colony of extinct passenger pigeons * always alone yet still i feel like i’m part of something happening in the next room * i dream that we begin writing our story it is fun and we do it as we are walking through the door on our way out of dark blue dark blue have you ever been alone in a crowded room well i’m here with you the world could be burning til there’s nothing but a dark blue room * at the bar i saw the reflection in the window of a handwritten menu and i thought it was arabic i no longer doubt just decipher and correct myself you said diaspora shouldn’t rob me of feeling like a whole person * in a lyft last summer i pictured a gold orb in my center pulling toward itself all the small pieces of me the years scattered to the edges of me pieces of me trying to help me expand or trying to escape ? * quantumly speaking you’ve left a particle in me and i you i you i you like waves against a boat once something holy we were plankton parted in the red sea we came together again inside its lone blue whale as the water rises up sun sinking down all the planets in a row the night a perfect shade of dark blue dark blue i got caught between teeth but you rode the whalesong up over the spray over the breach thrown against that blue you became stars adorning the hawa now stars live in your voice when you sing (sometimes to me) i make a wish which is just a particle manufactured in the heart in the eye during sleep during dreams do you sea what i sea a floater illuminated by light * things come slow or not at all no tricks all light no expectation just wonder i know deep space calls you back often here, for your travels: a pocketful of jasmine picked this morning that’s the way i luv u but my hair looks so good right now. i wish you’d mess it up

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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