We rented a small place by the sea.
For a few days, we could look out
across a widening expanse of blues. Nights
beside the water, more stars. You traced
Orion’s Belt against the dark.

I hoped to be free of seeking attention
from the external world, which always 
overwhelmed my art. Yet, in my work
there were times I could give myself 
over completely to matters of the heart. 
In the sand, I watched white-breasted gulls

return. You could spend lifetimes 
in the shadow of other people’s wants,
and you have done it many lifetimes over,
said the mystic, brushing my tears 
from the cards. In my work,

I was adept at constructing niche
dioramas of the heart, long hallways
for certain sorrows to brood in, and sudden 
windows facing westward to gaze upon joys,
until, one morning, I found my own joy
dead in the yard. After that,

I woke repeatedly into a persistent dark.
So you see, I often said, I have lived so long
with a vacant heart and what if our love
turns to sand? You take my hands

into your hands. Our small place: the sea
is illegible at night, except for its solemn 
crashing. To be drawn into oneself, then out
like the tide, is that love? Or is love

what shore remains? 
By the sea, everything seen
is seen lightly, shadows of wings 
passing over sand.

The document mistranslates. You live / to collect your loved one’s losses / Their archive. Their quiet. What did you leave behind, oh ache ? / Oh whimper? / You are everyone I kn(o/e)w. When I stood in Al Akhdar I heard the streets calling your name. I heard the men / stomping their feet & I wept & I wept & I wept across the Dead Sea, across (mis)memories of my mother pacing / that miserable street. Somewhere you are smoking argeela Playboy / sunglasses clasped to your shirt. Somewhere I am sleeping next to you & you are asking me about death & I am too young too young too young to know loss / & I promise you we’ll live forever. There at the edge / of Jaafar Al-Husseini Street my father returns / home all briefcase & sweaty hands. Once, a rooftop wedding. Once, a certificate of death. My father collected / every report card of mine growing up — A Pleasure to Have in Class A Pleasure / to grow up in the states, a pleasure to be untouched by the news to hold a Certificate / of Participation for Your Obedience to the State. You Live Long Enough in the United States & You Mistake an Israeli Warplane for A Shooting Star my friend says / her eyes / offering me a photo of the Sea. In Amman, I Don’t Have an Address to Your Grandmother’s Home, my 3amo says, but I Can WhatsApp You the Coordinates. From Dearborn Ramleh is 5,977 miles or 9619.049 kilometers away / depending on who we audience. In Amman I was Case No. 2530400000131915 because I lost my Passport & when the man with a cigarette asks me where I lost it I mishear him / I mistranslate & I am afraid / to cough from the smoke in that too small room & lose another country not mine. The Air Here . . . I tell her . . . If It’s Anything Like Cairo It’s Like Sand + Salt + Warmth + Also Somehow Sweet. It Fills Your Lungs Different. It’s Easier to Breathe, she tells me. In Palestine — I can’t tell you about Palestine / I’ve never been but I have my Father’s Documents to prove us / The documents that rename me / refuse me / spectacle our birth & our death The Document as map as fiction as shame as eviction Please Rate Your Experience Please / stand in this Assembly / Line of Loss / Please: We’ve all wanted to be loved / by an impossible thing / it’s why the monarch butterflies keep following us around & This Is How It Is Habibti / Things Happen Until You Die / & All You Can Do Is Not Break