Two Poems

Love Letter from a Third Culture Kid
(Dear Community)

The smell of itan* burning in the evening mixing with hilbit marakh*
The way that my tongue wraps awkwardly around Harari words;

These are some of the familiar things
these are the places I return to when I am losing myself in you,
When you are trying to find yourself in our new home
As if you were ever lost

I try to remember you as you were.
that I could move continents with the contents of you and change our world forever
But I can’t dig you out of me in this excavation
I can’t stay planted in this waiting when there so much that moves me
Like the way we refuse to wither through our seasons;

So evergreen in our commitment to the earth
Even though this forest was never for us
This place where a dream set on fire can be deferred to ashes
and you can feel alone when you’re surrounded

I never meant to feel so wildly out of element;
So fire and wind but never earth
So winter and fall but never summer
So tsunami in my wandering but never a settled sunny afternoon.
There are people the sun hunts for that the moon has made lovers out of

And I still search for you under moonlight;

even though I know you’re somewhere running with the sun in your mouth, relentlessly
I wonder how many worlds you would light if you chose to speak…
But you’re somewhere running, trying not to devour light
Or drown it with a hiccup or laughter

How many fibres of your being must you stretch before turning into someone else?

I hope I never have to do the math, or expand just to break like that
Or taste the ashes of my running, or run into you as someone else
Or have to translate home into silence,
and silences into held breath making homes out of our throats

*Itan – a Harari-Ethiopian incense
*Hilbit Marakh – Harari staple dish (oxtail stew soaked in injera)

Sitting at the foot of the heavens, unaware
(Ode to my womenfolk elders)

You make malawah the same way every mourning
Kneading dough to sweetness,
Folding and unfolding,
Frying to a crisp, until scent becomes the alarm clock to my Saturday

I devour the honey drizzled goodness for self-care
And you are devoured
You are exhausted
You woke up at fajr, and missed fajr

You excuse yourself to pray
Malawah-deprived, prayer is the only sweetness you have left to digest
You are distracted by CP24 and laughter, by arguments over the last piece,
By shaking hands as you reach for the floor—Allahu Akbar…

You feel you are falling apart,
But are calmed by the way sujood holds falling in muscle memory