Lyricizes

It is as if you have
lived five times over,
moving from mountain to mountain,
carrying our hearts on top of your own.

The way in which my genes are writ,
has wired me with my mother’s wit,
and tears that run just below my skin,
a surface scratch and I’m bawling sin.

I used to find my way
to infant sleep carried
on the shoulders of her lullabies;
songs made up from
stitches of Shahaadah.

Our car rides were treaded on
Tracy Chapman and Dolly Parton
and the cringe of
hearing her chorus along,
for pre-teens consider
musical-souled mothers weird and
embarrassing.

But there is comfort in the sandpaper of years
and the way they
slough off all those things
we know so little about.

For more than the way
my fringe falls over my eye
and how my smile is cast,
I would never be
my mother’s daughter
without her voice
resonant in my throat.

Ummi,

softer than stone

and stronger,

has run between

Safa and Marwa

for as long as

I’ve breathed.

At her feet

gush the springs

of home and hereafter.