Friends describe my DISPOSITION
as stoic. Like a dead fish, an ex said. DISTANCE
is a funny drug and used to make me a DISTRESSED PERSON,
one who cried in bedrooms and airports. Once I bawled so hard at the border, even the man with the stamps and holster said Don’t cry. You’ll be home soon. My DISTRIBUTION
over the globe debated and set to quota. A nation can only handle so many of me. DITCHING
class, I break into my friend’s dad’s mansion and swim in the Beverly Hills pool in a borrowed T-shirt. A brief DIVERSION.
My body breaking the chlorinated surface makes it, momentarily, my house, my DIVISION
of driveway gate and alarm codes, my dress-rehearsed DOCTRINE
of pool boys and ping pong and water delivered on the backs of sequined Sparkletts trucks. Over here, DOLLY,
an agent will call out, then pat the hair at your hot black DOME.
After explaining what she will touch, backs of the hands at the breasts and buttocks, the hand goes inside my waistband and my heart goes DORMANT.
A dead fish. The last female assist I decided to hit on. My life in the American Dream is a DOWNGRADE,
a mere DRAFT
of home. Correction: it satisfies as DRAG.
It is, snarling, what I carve of it alone.
From Look by Solmaz Sharif, published by Graywolf Press. Copyright © 2016 by Solmaz Sharif. Used with permission of Graywolf Press.