The Time of Being

The prize of solitude I reaped
endless nights of concrete streets
Sophie digging her nose into crevices
craving hints of previous passers.

Dreams of August drizzles
torrents
rinsing the pain of parting
though Lina still smiling
lingered in the precipitation.

Rituals of walking worship
greenness
persisting
in my footsteps
Sophie barking her misgivings.

Hours minutely revisited
flaring contentions
roped into my hair
flying at my face
swaying
my life
a sisal footbridge
coming to a standstill
deliberating
stepping down...
stamping the ashes
out
of memory
with every stride...

Crystal darkness
singing
tomorrows following
my shadow
against a backdrop of
evaporating
celestial promises.

A crown of clarity
I adorned
a still world
in a non-moving moment
perfumes of white white
wild
rose petals pampering
my nostrils
breathing
as though God was going to snuff out
the next whiff.

It was that time of being
I missed...

Mama's Kitchen

The solid bread on
the warm wooden table
under the neon sun
that lights your kitchen

a gray strand of hair on
the just-wiped tiled floor

and the Muezzin calls
from the patio window.

It is the dusk of our lives.

The mechanical voice
of the TV announcer
declares
yet another battle.

Still, the scent of ablution
from your palms
pacify
my corrugated brow.

You kneel
and the sustenance
of forever compassion
is your promise
as you talk to God.

Your kitchen is not our memory anymore, Mama.
The original
has found a resting place
of scorched stone
in Hai Al Jamiaa.

Here in Amman,
you cannot uphold the walls
of a home
that can gather
the peace
we once breathed
when the world acknowledged
us
as humans!

Your trying fingers
cannot knead
any more flakes
of make-shift safety
into our Khubuz, Mama...
It will not rise.
It has not risen in 13 years...

Nor can you raise a sanctuary
from within the darkness
of foreign sands
that rage
with our very presence.

You love on.
It is all you know.
You will love on
so we can live on.

And all the broken bread, Mama
all the cracked neon sunlight
and burned wooden tables
cannot bring back
what you want more than life for us...
our land
with your very own kitchen.