Habibi words

He seasoned my tongue with words in Arabic, a language that had lost its grip on him. Native sounds abandoned in the wet cement of suburbia, his attempts to articulate were scoffed at by sitti, who could really                                                                speak it.

I sprung up to kiss the corner of his jaw, which was softer then but not gentler, when he taught me the necessary words, fed to me in bent spoons and glass cups of tea; labneh , easal , bismillah ,                                                         hayati.

I let him bury his boney hips into my body, my hands searching for the heat of skin beneath billowing layers of thrifted cotton and corduroy. He awoke drenched and pliant after sleeping in two hoodies to prevent us both from touching                                                            his chest.

He showed me how to blend zit into za’atar, how to make a bong out of bottled water. He taught me things that made my mother hate him, and penned instructions on how to rage against                                                                                              patience.

As he traced the burnt tip of an incense stick across the ceiling of a bedroom I was a secret in, I wondered if I would ever love someone like this again, tender and trusting as the lambs his father slaughtered in the olive groves of beit hanina,               the homeland.

Named after a man but forbidden to become one, prayers punched holes into my beloved until his body resembled the night sky, permanently exiled to the land of those who are not pure enough: _Haram_–

                                                                                           I remember that one.