Marbles in My Mouth

This America  

flossed the script from my teeth, 9/11  

never let me forget to give my father a ring just in case,  

just in case, he became another case 

of rednecks shooting heads that hold drooping noses

in shades deemed too threatening. Seems 

these days, the streamline of headlines always hide the father

that got fucked by bullets all for folding his body

for the wrong god in the wrong place, at the wrong time.  

I don’t hate America, just the confusion 

of patriotism and nationalism. I don’t hate America but 

I hate fast food, much prefer the wait spent  

on dipped dates. I miss the taste  

of food seasoned with  ﺑﺴﻢ ﷲ 

but Halal food in the South ain’t cheap and

ooo, I miss the women who made it their mission  

to be my mother. I cuddled hand-me-down curves 

covered in malefa. The blossoms on soft palms 

and songs sung on overdrawn lips, shoveling  

gossip through the gaps in their teeth... 

I digress.  

Hardly elegant - the way terrorist 

tethers itself to my father’s trench-coats. No surprise, he totes a 5 

o’clock shade, bags under his brown eyes, all framed in tinted 

windshields.  

He keeps his shoulders hunched at work

and seems to stand the tallest 

when I see him ironing clothes,  

or re-watching retired Ramadan shows, or sending WhatsApp memos  

enclosed with a baritone coated in a tongue 

that fits too tight in my mouth. Like skinny jeans that get stuck at the 

thighs.  

Like my throat closes around I love you in a way that leaves a question mark at the end of  my

proclamation. Sometimes, I feel like I’m asking the right questions in the wrong language.  

My father Lyfts a whole lot and Ubers late and customers complain and rent seems to depend on

Heather’s 5-star rating and in high school, I believed a ticket to Harvard could change things and I found

myself up late, woken awake by wars waged on the other side of thin walls, our hollow apartment hall’s

carpet crawls to a table, decorated in bills bound to be paid,  practically reaching in our pockets for spare

change. And I started to think  

about my grandmother’s skin, leathered under the desert’s harsh rays, how a slow smile shook her whole

face. Started to think, about the place she left her children -- the script that marked it 

in her name. Did she ever feel this way? Like cursive 

can’t encapsulate all she had to say? Sometimes, I feel like 

I’m asking the right questions

in the wrong language.  

I assimilated right as shit was changing,

found myself other-ed when I brought a Qu’ran into first grade 

and Mrs. Sharrah politely asked me to put it away. And in the South,

pale people go through phases where

they shit on asians, and call women on welfare lazy, and 

throw in some other biased bullshit spitting

stereotypes through braces. 

That’s the climate I was raised in,

and how I’ve learned to explain shit?

With a white mother unwilling to get an education 

on the kind of situation a name like Khalid Mohammed gets you in.

Found myself wondering

how to be a woman without a woman who looks like me to me 

what a woman should and should not do? 

I found myself talking to walls just to 

drop the expectation of someone listening. Found 

myself neglecting hijabs for handjobs in the handicap stall

handing my whole body over to handsome men with no intention

of hitting my line again. Mohamed would be devastated to see the

predicament I’m in. I’d tell him to listen, but I can’t find the right words

to list in the correct order.  

I can carry conversations but can’t weight them  

with curses like this. Fuck, I wish my Arabic didn’t  

fall out like marbles in mouth.  ﺳﯿﺠﺔ used to be my favorite game  

to see growing up in Nouakchott. I rocked the full garb and banged my 

knees 

against carpet sprawled on concrete floors before I fell on all fours 

in the back seats of honda accords. In my stream of thoughts, script  

sews itself into half of it  and still, I find myself on the outskirts of two worlds  

since I’ve left girlhood. Tried to build a bridge with my back  

across the Atlantic, stretched my body as far as the skin  

on my limbs would grant it, but found myself poured over prayer  

mats still asking the right questions in the wrong languages.  

Hoping God translates this.