the uber I step into is halal.

at least the driver tells me so.

he says, this window is halal

this door is halal, this floor;

& we both laugh, the prayer

hung in the rearview

a minaret that calls my knees,

the closest to masjid

I have been in years.

tonight this ride is the umma

I choose, the driver’s hoot

a dervish that whirls my smile.

he says:

              I am 1% halal, 99% shaitan

              at least my devil is honest.

khuda ka shukr, at least my devil

is honest: my skirt a little too short

my collarbones, ridges

for lovers’ fingers to find flight.

I never dress right for any

weather, my arms a gathering of bumps

all my aunties’ shame ice

the blood below my inked veins.

my knees wobble on the edge

of what I should be & what I am.

at the end of my sight I dream a world

brimming with my contradictions.

when I turn to look it disappears.

my devil quiet the days I wrap my hair

in a bouquet. but tonight, mashallah,

we are safe from his gaze in this rushed

chariot. I lace the backseat with my haram.

I trace an altar in my god’s name.

An absence declares
its blunt self. I can’t believe the extent
of my luck, heard twice, like violets
in a bath of lukewarm water.
The city was my father’s though none
of its sweetness appears here living
before you. A strong instrument.
A blowing on the hands
and neck. A curtain almost open.
I inherited a stiff collar sewn
against loveliness where once
we must have walked freely into
the city square and gathered
there like an intention. Two lips bloomed
on my mother’s cheek. I felt
a heavenly peace. Here, the marker you
might have waited for: ancient
dough, rolled and fried. These days
the lyric’s sentiment floats
away from me. Like a river someone
forgets to bless. Memory, to memory,
to the dirt path opening
again in a dream. I have not been back
for so many years. I walk the distance
in my mind, the margins flowing by
like so much foreign water.