“Two teaspoons of coffee, one teaspoon of sugar, and pour it right before it boils down”, my mother said smelling the coffee she is cooking to perfection. I stand there and wonder what scent Hamlet was smelling when he said “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark”, I’m guessing it’s the same scent colonizing this house. I look at the ***** ceiling and start sniffing the air. My mother looks at me and says “your nose is nearing the skyline, keep it where your feet are. Men don’t like prideful women”.

I looked around trying to see what smelled so repulsive. My grandmother lit incense, my sister baked a fresh orange cake for celebration, my other sister splashed a few drops of the musk that the Arab man gifted us all over the house, and father held a stack of 500 Riyal banknotes to his nose.  

The rich Arab that knocked on our door last week asking if we have an extra womb for sale is visiting again today. My mother prepared a hot bath for me an hour ago; she said I have to smell like freshly uprooted Baladi roses, so I soaked in the bathtub trying to figure out what is this repulsive scent I am smelling.

Right after I finished my bath I told my mother “something stinks”. Her reply was dragging me to the kitchen where she teaches me how to make coffee. I say “mother, nobody drinks coffee here”, she says “You need to learn how to properly make coffee to serve our sheikh some tonight. Remember, eyes on the ground”. I reply reciting the lesson she just taught me “Keep them where my feet are”.

I hear people in the city overlook what lies beneath their feet; a 16 year old city girl will never know what it means to have to walk 30 kilometers with a broken shoe in order to read one book. I guess farming taught me a thing or two about looking down. I remember reading before that African slaves were shipped to America to primarily work in farms, coffee and sugar farms to be exact. I realize now what this stink is. I look at my mother and tell her “I will not marry him. This ring reeks of slavery”. She looks at me in astonishment, and I reply reciting the lesson she just taught me “and pour it right before it boils down”.

“I remember the bed just floating there” is how Phil Kaye started his ‘repetition’ poem.  
I remember pausing the youtube video after he ended his masterpiece.
I remember burying my feelings under 3 blankets and 4 hours of binge watching spoken word poetry.
I do not remember the dreams I could have had.

I remember the set of nightmares that visited religiously like the downstairs neighbor tired of how loud my heart pounds at late evenings.
I remember, very clearly, how they went.
I do not remember if I have written them down.

Dream one: he peels my freckles off my skin; he says he needs them because his coffee is too light. I scream while he calmly adds pints of the cheeks I inherited from my mother’s reactivity and the sun’s intensity to his coffee. He says I can never be as quiet as the girl who managed to sneak into his ribcage and build herself a bedroom.

Dream two: We are standing in the great library of Alexandria. He pulls the sea from underneath my feet and stuffs it into his back pocket. He says he needs it because he is tired of drowning himself in uncertainty. I start to cry and he says: Aries is the god of war, and women born under this sign confuse war for love.

I remember the mole on his left ear growing bigger in my nightmares without me ever watering it.
I remember he smelled of tangerine trees and broken records.
I do not remember if his face looked like the man I almost fell in love with last winter, or my father.

I remember the first time I saw my father after he came back from Ukraine.
I remember his brown leather shoes that oozed of old spice cologne and neat scotch.
I remember his hardly worn pair of glasses and the pieces of me they never cared to read.
I remember the wrinkles that seemed newer than his glasses slowly colonizing his hands... the hands that never held me as tight as the dress I wore to my school prom hoping it would catch my ex’s attention.

I remember that dress.
I remember it had a floral print reminiscent of the season that I was named after hoping maybe it would remind him I’m part him.
I remember realizing he will never remember.
And now, I sit on a carpet of autumnal leafs as crisp as my tied tongue and as dead as my fears, trying to turn my love for him into more than just a memory.

She leaves a note in the morning after, signed with her name because he whispered the name of another woman while he was inside her.
She leaves a note written in her bright red lipstick because he said it made her lips look like cherries, and her mother had taught her that the fastest road to a man’s heart is a good meal.
She leaves the note in her bright red lipstick because he didn’t compliment the dress she wore on her fragile body, the shoes she wore on her dainty feet, or the heart she wore on her sleeves;
He complimented the lipstick she wore as a note written on his mirror; an instrument of multiplication, she had to face it all, and face it twice. Twice the bed frame, twice the sheets, twice his sleeping body, and twice her face.
What she likes the most about the note is covering a part of the mirror, and a mirror is never a friend.

He takes a leap of faith and jumps headstrong into a relationship that he knows will drown him.
He was named a champion in the 2015 Olympiad for swimming;
he lost his golden medal but the whiplash on his heart when he delved into the waters will always remind him how salty it tasted.
He sinks into an abyss of intensity that he cannot dry out no matter how long he sits near the lonely candle next to Madonna’s portrait.
He soaks in the glistening sunlight; water was never his friend.

She brushes her hair every evening and every evening she reminds herself that she needs to brush off her family’s rejection.
He trains everyday and every day he reminds himself that his heart is also a muscle.
They do it in the dark because it’s easy to love another and scary to see yourself.

Dear me,

I hope this letter finds you kind, I hope it finds you at ease,
I hope it finds you as you were born.. a soft spring breeze.

I am writing this letter to inform you that your time is not up, that you still have space to unfold, that you are a continuum that doesn’t have to settle for the broken uni-verse where you were unraveled.

You, love, are not limited to your synonyms.

You, love, can develop into a hurricane that doesn’t dwell in a farmer’s cabin.
You, love, can develop into a hurricane that travels between the back of your mind and its front.
You, love, can develop into a hurricane with a FedEx envelop for a title.
You, my love, can develop into a hurricane that transports your memories from the backyard of your colon to the backside of this letter.

You, love, can develop into a sandstorm speaking the names of the Saharas to your left and to your right.
You, love can develop into a sandstorm that does not blind the sufi midnight traveler.
You, love, can develop into a sandstorm that travels beyond the desert.
You, my love can develop into a sandstorm carrying a water-well for the thirsty.

You, love, can develop into an ocean that doesn’t stand in arrogance where there is land.
You, love, can develop into an ocean that waxes and wanes to the rhythm of the moonlight caressing you.
You, my love, can develop into an ocean that doesn’t erode the rocks standing on its shore.

You, love, can develop into a soft spring breeze that makes a home of all the other seasons.
You, love, can develop into a soft spring breeze that gently ****** through a baobab tree trunk.
You, love, can develop into a soft spring breeze that playfully tickles the arms of a refugee on her bus to camp.
You, my love can develop into the synonyms you are not limited to.

Kindly find attached to this letter the love your father has tucked in bed a long time ago and never double checked on it.
Kindly find attached to this letter the understanding your mother stored in the kitchen cabinet she is too short to reach.
Kindly find attached to this letter the forgiveness you have tried to grow out of sunflowers seed every winter.

Sincerely,

Yours.

It is 1826, and last time I heard from him was 7 years ago.
“I will be back, mother” he promised in his military attire.
The worst part about a broken promise is voiding a word of its meaning.
The rifle that killed my son murdered the word ‘back’;
I do not trust the milkman when he says he will be back with my change.
I do not trust the government when it says it has a back-up plan.
I do not trust my husband when he says he has my back.
It is 1826, and last time I felt good looking in the mirror was 25 years ago.
“You look beautiful”, my husband said but he wasn’t looking at me.
I saw his eyes escaping mine and drifting to the unknown lands of easy days .
The beauty he saw was not in my berries colored cheeks or ******* that stand with pride.
The beauty he saw was in what they reflected in the mirror;
a walk back home with shoes that fit,
a dinner table with bread that isn’t stale,
a bed with soft sheepskin that doesn’t scratch the wounds opened from the death of a loved one.

The morning begins with another bottle. Her
broken mirror has already spoken its lies,
crucified her  with a stranger's face invading
her bathroom.
Later
the stairwell does not echo her footseps
as she descends, carefully, one foot, then the other,
the exact placement of each step thoughtfully
considered, planned out and
executed with a grace that is almost
Procrustean.
She leaves no shadow behind herself, throws
away words into the deep green silence.
They fall.
I could get a job, she tells herself,
listening to the silence of her footsteps.
I could blunt the stings of honeybees,
gather the nectar of drones.
Her feet sink into the softness of the stairsteps.
At the bottom, she opens the locked door of the mailbox
hugs junkmail to her breast.
Her fingers leak tiny drops of blood
over the sealed envelopes. Her mouth
is full of dust. She eats her memories.

My mother asks me to buy her milk and I stand in line at the grocery store.
I hold the milk bottle in both my hands afraid it would break like my heart did last night when I saw my maid's daughter, a 16 year old child,  breastfeeding her 1 year old son.
I felt sorry that when her culture sees a little girl playing with her dollhouse, it asks the little girl to be the doll
I felt sorry that when her culture sees a little girl fixing the ribbons over her braids, it thinks of ways to tie her legs as tightly as her hair,
I felt sorry that when her culture sees a little girl, it doesn’t see a little girl
but I did not voice my opinion because what I felt most sorry about was calling it her culture when I was born in the same city she was born in.
I see the line was moving while I stood still.
The woman standing behind me holding a jar of coffee, a pack of cigarettes, and a pair of tired shoulders gives me a look for not paying attention.
I take a step forwards,
I look behind me;
I smile politely at her, and say “I’m sorry”.