In my country

In my country,
there is a wilderness that
moans
under the fog
as it settles
in the valley
between intimacy
and
soft thighs.

dream sequence (ii)

last night in between the hours of moonlight and birdsong,

i rested my soul in the space between your smile and your cheek.

curled my entire body right into it,
fit like a dream.

Parting prayer

Your lips part like cemetery gates;
I hesitate,
bow my head and whisper prayers
for every soul that has pressed against your mouth
and left, breathing.

I want to step inside,
bury myself under an evergreen,
feed you for a century
or more.

Lovesong of a Curandera

The lovesong of a curandera

drips like nectar from her lips.

I want to kiss her on the mouth

that sings my soul to peace,

licks my wounds, and

heals the rifts in my psyche.

I want to take her hands

and place them around my heart,

beg her to sculpt and stitch it

whole again.

Sometimes all she does is listen,

watches my tears

and says

Look, mija. The ocean comes for you.

It takes the pebbles under your feet

and rolls them smooth

for you

to pick the prettiest and wear around your neck

or to throw back into the blue.

Espéra, strange and beautiful one.

and that will be all the hope I need

to breathe a little deeper,

throw open my soul

and dream again.

---

With love, to my curanderas and curanderos. 

Dada

A colorful life,

a brilliant spiral downward. 

They fall like kings.

Like leaves off a tree.

We sat side by side

looking straight ahead,

my arm around my father's shoulders,

my other hand in my mother's. 

I thought, this is my family,

silent and distant,

wound tightly together by blood and time.

My grandfather was laid to rest across the sea.

The last patriarch.

Headmaster Mostafa.

The village elder.

He sat down and never stood up,

mid-prayer, late eighties. 

Lived through three nations on the same land,

died a Bangladeshi man.

He would ask me to speak to him in English,

but I never knew what to say.

I didn't much know what to say in my broken Bangla either.

Language, a generation, an ocean between us.

I wanted to say I love you, Dada

but I knew the words would echo strangely,

foreign.

Family love is felt, seldom spoken.

For my grandfather,

it was in the way he let me sit by him

and laughed

as I braided his long beard.

Dream Sequence (i)

I dreamt I tore all my hair out,

then stretched myself limb from limb

until my arms circled the world

and I still couldn't reach you.

I wove you a cloak,

adorned it with my teeth and bones,

wished it would protect you.

I even left you my skin,

thin as these pages, and

took only my inheritance in a ribbed chest full of sea glass

(before it met the sea).

In the nighttime I filled my lungs 

with saltwater and brine,

wore memories 

heavy in my pockets.

I am fine when I wake up because the moon is too bright

(and if you ignore the way the ocean follows its pull behind my eyes).

I lost my mind to the moon.

I lost myself to you.

Suicide Hotline

Wednesdays, people tell me they
want to die.
Sometimes,
all I want to say to them is,
Baby,
you and I both.