The poem that resulted in my drive from Hartford to Hanover last week.

The only emotion easier than anger is sadness, which looks too much like pity to be thrust onto a woman of your strength. For my mother, my fountain of faith, who reminds me to fight for what I believe in the worst way sometimes…by the downpour.

Yet another ride
down a snoring road
crossing New England
In the passengers seat
a bellowing history book of sins
and strict rules bound by strength
is beautiful

It is uncommon for you to be this quiet on a ride
but you still say all that you would want to
the percussion of each breath
a matter of fact sound repeatedly punctuated
by a schizophrenic back and forth paranoid battle,
What is described as “a snorting breath during sleep”

Apparently it is impossible to dream whilst snoring
I imagine, dear mother, that you have long been afraid to
that your nightmares look too much like your memories.
It is still unclear how a woman who has seen so much battle
always manages to come out on top.

Warrior woman you raised an Athena like yourself
and most of the honesty between us
emerges out of feeling combatively corned.
when I feel trapped.
which now is left for days like these
when there is no escaping a battlefield with wheels
and a mother with too many lectures
but not enough good questions.

We have not called the same place home in a year
Our storage is full of burnt out thunderbolts and crushed armor,
our phone conversations the biting taste of iron.
I am told too often about my guard (purity), that my clothes are too tight,
that my shields are not high enough, that I know too many men I trust,
that I don’t know the right time to run away from a fight

We have not learned the same things from war.

Last week you asked me to pray for your friends’ brother
A man in Florida who accidently killed his wife,
in an infidelity fueled rage,
…with a baseball bat.
I can say…like I did last week
that despite all the love in me
I have not learned how to pray for men like that.

Today,
I hear you speaking on the phone
relaying the story
trying to defend a party
Using the phrase:
oloriburiuku obirin
meaning
‘horrible woman’
Forgetting that violence is only ever justified
in the minds of those who commit it.
Forgetting the conversations knives and fists
have had with your throat and body
I wish you did not hold that bat with him today
Umi,
I wish that you would not let the blood and hair
claim your hands and hijab

Somehow you do not see the connection in the faults
of this conversation and the one you have with me
in which you claim that a woman’s body is so holy
men can only read sin into it.
I still do not know how to be trapped into that lack of connections.
I have never felt good hiding behind those cloaks
I will never look good in the lessons learned from your mistakes
In that veiling, and its patriarchal God

He
Who only re-disguises himself
As everyone else’s God
And still finds ways to stand in the mirror cursing
And still trying to catch all my holy with the fire from either side

It should be easier to simply choose one of them
what with my cover too lacking to make me a ‘good Muslim girl’
and juxtaposed modesty too abundant for my sexuality to not be questioned
Choosing would surely be easier than this
But I will not feed from flawed leftovers
Dear mother,
I cannot worship at a temple of backwash


Today
I am stuck in the car with you
All the things that cannot be said over dinner,
or a two day visit
being forced back into my throat by my own hands

I wish I could tell you,
as I have learned,
That the world is not all battles
and how to choose the right ones

That you cannot wear your armor all the time
that even if you end up being partially exposed
you can pray for blooms to sprout from the bruises
and be thankful for your thick skin

I wish
I could tell you about all the handprints
and dented breastplates
How I have found away for them to teach me
Resilience

But today
You are fighting, again,
in a world that you think of
as the highest level of hell,
The world I know
as simply the lowest level of heaven
we have not called the same place home in at least a year
I imagine my words would not translate well as they descend
That they may fall
on deaf ears
and hardened hands

I do in fact know retreat
Taking all of me that is
what the woman you would like to be hopes to be
I will go into hiding (yet again)

The monotonous humming of this road
you will not hear me snoring
Will never know I’ve gone to sleep