Home Is Not a Country: Prologue

a passport picture in mama’s wallet
a single furrow in his brow

i keep this photograph in a tin box
that once held butter biscuits
long ago eaten by guests unimpressed
with our spare american living

we’ve always known each other
our mothers friends from back home
bound into some ancient sisterhood
of grief his mother the only one
who can make my mother laugh

are you going to tell? he whispers
& i shake my head thrumming
with excitement & fear

haitham for all his atrocious grades
is at least good at people while i am a solid
b minus in every class & barely scraping
a passing grade in any social interaction

we do not talk we poke glumly at our wilted lunches

now instead i make my own dejected sandwiches
damp in their paper towels two pieces of untoasted
white bread & between them a single slice
of plasticky american cheese

i go to halfhearted arabic classes each sunday
in a rented room at the middle school & bleat
alef baa taa thaa

we never ask why our mothers had come here
& could not let it go though i always beg
for the same crumpled photograph stories of
weddings that went on for weeks cafes crowded
with poets gardens lush & humming
with mosquitoes

maybe named for some unknown dead relative
some dreary ghost so of course no one wants me
at their party their sleepover their after-school
trip to the mall

i imagine her yasmeen this other girl bright & alive
mouth full & dripping with language easy in her charm
& in essence she looks like me but of course
better nails unbitten & painted turquoise

i imagine her back home fathered beloved
knowing all the songs & all their corresponding dances

haitham calls me a nostalgia monster & likes to laugh
at the dream-brain that takes over mine when i hear
the old songs & run my fingers
over the old photographs

nima meaning grace it would be funny
if it weren’t cruel i stumble over my own overlarge
feet & knock over the clay incense holder

i trip on the carpet’s hem & fall chipping a tiny corner
of my bottom front tooth & in calling my name
in exasperation my mother calls
for the grace i don’t have