He thought of all the times when
silence was choking;
when the sky ached to open
and give up its tears.
He thought of ponds, rippleless
like silent graves or the cool stone
of a forgotten mausoleum.
He thought of what hitting the bottom would be like,
and if the pain would be enough--
gliding down empty highways like water at 90 miles per hour,
going down with the same intensity as a scream or
a question mark--
if the gaping nostalgia would be forgotten in a simple burning burst.
He thought of what it would taste like
if he subsisted on polluted rain
or a prostitute's kisses or
the smell of wet soil that throbs with chemical crop embryos instead of
the slender cinnamon fingers of a virgin bride, all dark eyelashes and hair
beneath a veil, carefully
planting seeds.
He thought of his mother, a
hard-nosed Palestinian with a loathing
for the red, white, and blue country and a love
for her God, and
an eye for decorating cement bomb shelters.
He thought of eyes, too-
how his mother had the kind that weighed on the tongue, with color richer
than the banker down the street, and how, sometimes,
you could go to sleep inside of them, very innocently, very sweetly.
(And her, sitting by the gray-glowing window in the midst of
a war, singing in Arabic, the tv blurring motion in the background,
asking quietly
to be listened to.)
He thought of never going home, and having to endure
harsh American winters and strangers that hesitantly shook his hand and
could not say "shalom" or call him a brother and
upon hearing his name stiffened and glared as if
he was something all rosy-faced white children should be afraid of.
America with her coldness,
Freezing the melting pot in the midst
of a smoky, steel-skeletal stir,
so that everybody hated him and looked at him
and thought of apocalyptic airplanes descending
into numbness.
He thought of letting a few things go-
like the smell of spice in the kitchen,
the other one with the grumpy old stove and
the threadbare Persian carpet and
the worn-out familiar comfort and the sandals by the door and
the dirty little brown boys with dusty elbows who
came in from the streets and the Pepsi cans they kicked and
the acrid stench of flame and family and food
in one room.
He missed them and the way
he could never return to them,
missed the intangibility of that ignorant, hot, careless life, rife
with happy uniformed men and happy elders and happy marketplaces, and poor little earthy pots full of rainwater and dry lips on scratchy cheeks and whisperings of Allah, and remembering like breathing
something that was dead now.
And of the many things he thought he knew about the
oil and justice seekers and the big alabaster men infiltrating all that spoke of home, with their balding scalps and business suits and crisp ties and
crisper lies,
Of all the heavy commanding voices thunderously trying to be godlike,
and the scarred sacred sands of his homeland,
the machine guns and the knives and the lives
wasted away in spurts of sound-
of all the things born of clouds, he looked inside himself and saw
quivering weakness become still and dangerous and sad, and
harden around a hating, breaking heart.
He didn't reach for his holy books.
He instead opened his chest
to study this new glittering rockiness,
the depthless black anonymity of enmity,
the terrible boiling bitterness:
A promise.
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