“Just don’t bring home a white boy,” your father
bid. So you did. He was flippin’ flippant
when he said, “the devil is in my daughter,”
but I was, too, daily. We’d had blatant
need for veils: your hijab, my sonnet. Place
for grace. Safe space. Each poem was a road
home for us: “Fuck ass, let no wrath erase
our path.” In my bedroom more than faith flowed
where my tongue teased. Each kiss a phat freckle,
salvation. My palms on your breasts. Until …
fissures from your father’s need to control
us: his, “modest virgin,” her, “infidel
b-boy” – men who sew their woe; men who kill
joy all because of their own broken soul.
