al-Maskubiyyah 1

I found the beginning of homelessness in my home,

at the corner of a the drowning mountain-street where

I used to sneak into the smell of the neighborhood

like humid smoke that confiscates all the bedrooms, and

the vintage good old days.

At that moment in time, some rough sketches of my childhood
appear to imply the smell of fate, one that is conceived by memories:

“The moon in me is initiated by memories.”

So I stood in the middle of the intersection,

looking for things to challenge me,
for old collectible coins,

for things that haven’t known me,

and I haven’t yet known.

Things to capture and be captured by,
things that I can leave in my pocket for a whole day in the extended life of Jasmine flowers so I can close my eyes, and listen with my silence to distant cars, and retrieve myself from the edge of the dangerous moment just before I fall:

“Challenge in noise.”

I then place myself on a new corner in the neighborhood,
my own.

A place where I cannot be reached by the curiosity of the passers by, my own.
I am situated right where the watery grass in our backyard meets the cement, in a house maybe I can claim as my own!

“Love is my own.”

And my own are secrets in everything that is my own.

“The neighborhood is my own.”