georgia says you're never coming back

teach me how to speak
because being around this much arabic, 
this much foreign is not good for me,
and i think i’ve forgotten, not who i am, but what i am.

(i never knew who i was anyway)

the babies next door cry and cry and cry and cry and cry 
and cry and cry and eat a little bit and cry and cry and maybe
for a few minutes each day they giggle and open wide eyes and
stare at their crib-caged world.

(the parents play phonics songs all day 
to distract them and i remember the lyrics but not the words)

i think i need to learn how to write too because
it’s real loud in this house during the day and i can’t concentrate,
so i stay up real late and blame my 12 hour sleeping on jet lag.

(last night, i saw a rat in the gutters outside
and i swear it looked up and smiled at me)

i know what everyone would say if they saw this
‘you have to stop with this writing shit, honey, you’re just
you’re just not very good and uh, well my laptop battery’s 
about to die so…’

(i talk to much and i ask too many stupid questions
so people never wonder about me)

her name was twelve and she liked playing chess
with the old men at washington square
(she was evenly matched and the winner always bought lunch)
and feeding the rats that scuttled under subway tracks 
with bits of gyro and sometimes 
when she was bored she would pickpocket grouchy looking
business men and use their credit cards to donate 59.72 dollars 
to st. jude’s children’s hospital.

when twelve turned nineteen, she was hit by a car
on 5th ave (the driver was seventeen year old amanda rotani
who got her driver’s license three days before) and in her coma,
she had long conversations with god.

they drank tea and watched all these sad little people
wander around the world, which twelve realized is not as big as she thought.
she never asked why she was hit by a car or why did god invent cancer
but asked him what his favorite color was and did he like his tea with two sugar cubes
or one?

eventually, god introduced her to a friend of his named grim 
and as twelve was unkindly pushed out of her body, grim grabbed her hand
and guided her away.

twelve still has conversations with god but they never have much to say anymore

she promised herself tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow
and let the word roll off the top of her mouth until it didn’t make sense anymore.
she hid today underneath the rotting of her wisdom teeth 
and told herself that yesterday is today and not the tomorrow she promised
days before.

there were mice that whispered in the back of her throat,
that scratched ache into the deep space
 before the roller coaster down to her stomach 
 hoping to be swallowed,
 to be pushed home by a lapping tongue and a forgetful, 
human mind.

god sometimes asked her questions,
like
why do I mourn and why do you
let your fingernails grow like wild tangles of weeds that move with no
direction and no purpose but to be there and to exist

and she always says ‘god, maybe i’ll know tomorrow’

i. zaina

she is seventeen and crushes almonds with
a jagged piece of marble the wife of her boss gave her
when she first came. her uniform is hand washed, separate 
from everyone elses clothes, but her fingers still burn from the bleach.

  she is seventeen and her father found her this job
 in casablanca with these american moroccans who throw away
 money and have intricately designed ceilings in every room,
 with plush carpet and layers of curtains that decorate the rooms,
 rather than shade them.
 
 she is seventeen and she wants to get married
 to an american who won’t hit her like moroccan husbands do;
 who will teach her english and work at a university 
 and show her love which is something extremely hard to attain
 in a country where is it free.
 
she is seventeen and she pities the girl who just flew in from new york,
who has an ipod and a computer and her own guest room upstairs.
she pities her lack of arabic and she pities the look that sometimes wanders
into her eyes, like she has lost something important
and she does not know where to start looking.
 
ii. hanna
 
 she is sixteen and spends days lying on her grandmother’s
 couch and swatting at the mosquitoes that gather around
 her ear and buzz, their stomachs full of her blood.
 
she is sixteen and sometimes wanders casablanca,
watching the tram, something unheard of in new york
fly by on the streets and she thinks it must be a regular thing
for people to be hit. she goes to the small shacks
and points at the seeds and the hawai tropical soda
 and the strawberry creme candies she loves 
 and buys it all for less than a dollar
 
 she is sixteen and speaks limited arabic so she can never understand
what the maid tries to tell her or the man at the train station or in the 
tiny corner stores with no doors. she plays cat’s cradle with herself, 
chewing on crushed almonds and counts the days 
till she leaves

iii. salma 

she is fifteen and does not understand why her cousin dislikes 
morocco. to her it is the country of freedom, where she can wear
her hair down and put on short sleeves and even capri pants without
being stared at with repulsed biting eyes from the street. 

she is fifteen and likes to watch american shows where people
fling curses and words of love and hate like they are nothing
at each other. of course, there is always a voice 
in the back of her mind that reminds her in creeping whispers
that it is time for prayer or wudu. 

she is fifteen and dreads when she will pack away her capris
and tank tops and pulls on her hijab to return to saudi
with her brothers who will ask her in puberty ridden, cracking voices
 if she enjoyed her trip and she will look down and shrug,
 a ghost of a smile flickering across her face.

(will be left under an airplane seat)

she sees the world better upside down
and when she woke, alone
with a strange candy sweet taste under her tongue,
she knew it was much harder to remember than it was to forget.

the doctors call her in whispered, worried tones ‘anastasia’
 for the gas that made her no one and she adopted it,
 because she knew no other persona to be.

she has vague recollections of gypsy dancers
with jangling waists and russia but only hazy visions like deja vu
that kiss her on each cheek while she sleeps
and she wakes with the faint scent of perfumed nostalgia on her skin.

when she stretches her muscles, they whisper
of effortless handstands and backtucks and roundoffs 
that have been sewn into her skin, shivering like ghost limbs 
and she knows that she can never forget something
her blood remembers.

the doctors say she is a medical mystery,
so anastasia lays against the peeling hospital walls,
breaking bridges and rising upside down from the fall
and feels her sharp nose and ballerina feet,
searching for history in herself.

I get too caught up in the concept of someday and sometimes
and I trace my hand through the space between infinity,
between when you were here and when you were gone.
 
My fingertips are splotched with ink ,
I used to make whorls and swirls on your skin,
on wrists and cheekbones and jaw lines,
and someday maybe I’ll do it again but
I get too caught up in the concept of someday and sometimes.
 
and I trace my hand through the space between infinity,
and I eat the sunflower seeds you used to hate,
crack, chew and spit
until the living room carpet is littered with my roach shelled anger.
 
and sometimes when I’ve forgotten things,
the way your hair looked cut short for the summer,
the exact shade of your eyes under murky fluorescent lights
the ink-black whorls and swirls on your skin,
on wrists and cheekbones and jaw lines -
I look at yellowing photographs from a time
between when you were here and when you were gone.
 

someday i’ll ask you to tell me when your hair got so yellow,
not blonde, but yellow, like the dandelions in pennsylvania
that i saw each summer when i visited.
i’ll ask you to tell me when your eyes got so green,
like the sea bled into it or like you blinked in mint leaves.
last i remember, your eyes were like someone broke the sky,
chipped away at it with a sculpting tool like michelangelo.

i’ll ask you this and more when you come home from
salem or chicago or wherever it is you are.
georgia says you’re never coming back
but you always liked to prove her wrong and
when you show up in your beat-up camry
with your mix-tapes and ripped up leather seats,
that’s when we’ll go back to dancing salsa in the dining room
and eating easter eggs in may
like we did when we were kids three million years ago.

these days blend into each other and
i just hope that you keep sending me postcards
with those little polaroids stuck to the back
and i hope that maybe you’ll send me a cardboard box
chock full of acorns from wisconsin and diamond costume jewelry
and maybe some bird seeds so i can feed the bluejays
that sleep in the birdhouse we built
out back.

Someday I’ll ask you to tell me when your hair got so yellow,
not blonde, but yellow, like the dandelions in that field in Pennsylvania
that I saw each summer when we visited Aunt Janie.
I’ll ask you to tell me when your eyes got so green,
like the sea bled into it or like you blinked in mint leaves.
Last I remember, your eyes were like someone broke the sky,
chipped away at it with a sculpting tool like Michelangelo
until all that was left were shards and shrapnel of a gentle bomb
no one wanted to go off.

I’ll ask you this and more when you come home from
Salem or Chicago or wherever it is you are.
Georgia says you’re never coming back
but you always liked to prove her wrong and
when you show up in your beat-up Camry
with your mix-tapes and ripped up leather seats,
that’s when we’ll go back to dancing to Georgia’s voice 
in the dining room after dinner, the dishes still on the table, 
Mom laughing at our waltz, her hands tangled in Dad’s, 
Rudy clapping his baby boy hands and Georgia was happier then, 
she really was.

These days blend into each other, airless Septembers
becoming quiet Octobers becoming sober Novembers
becoming heartless Decembers and it’s colder out here now,
like all the foxes and deer and rabbits have packed up shop
and left for the South. Maybe you’ll see them strolling by the road
and they’ll grin and tell you I said hello. 

I just hope that you keep sending me postcards
with those little Polaroids taped to the back, of the pretty girls
you see on tour and the expensive things you can almost afford
and I hope that maybe you’ll send me a cardboard box
chock full of acorns from Wisconsin and diamond costume jewelry
from one of those gypsy’s in New Orleans and maybe 
some bird seeds so I can feed the bluejays
that sleep in the birdhouse we built
out back.

lol y dont u guise ask mah opinin on dha tumbler riters?