The Lighthouse, 2024

For you: فَنَرْ, lover of moonlight, tanned water skin,

upstream current: فَرَاغْ, phantom touch, echoing hum, wholeness

of a hole—somewhere, your each and every name

drifts back to the borders of my mouth.

For you: فُتَاتْ, firstborn daughter,

your tongue stretched, torn

between sea and land.

This is how to grow a hand-me-down life:

roots coiled around your hands, blood thick

with something hurting.

For him: بابا, he carried the leather of the lineage—

you fused the primal flesh

into your skin. Whose belonging will bare the bitter rind

of your fruitless origin?

There are no records of your ancestry,

except stories about socks and glitter.

Love that: forgotten folk; فَنَاء, antique-polished heart,

brass core, molten vein. Cinnamon fingers clutching

to the kingdom of two seas; البَحْرَيْن,

no single hand accountable for this unfurling. Why not worship

the past that paid for your life? Remember

your father’s name and his father’s name

and his father’s name and his father’s name,

slung on your shoulders, shaped like hundreds

of faraway daughters.

Love that: a small closet, whatever is not there,

all the dust you keep from the sun.

All these ways to taste the dates

on the land of a million palm trees: وَريدْ,

threads woven through the jellabiya—the same chord

around your throat, twine of language

embroidered on your nutmeg skin. Here, you leave: فُؤادْ,

morning sacrifice, octopus hearts, flame of heritage.

All these words, for you to say: let me stay.