On this sunny day,
In the sun room
Sitting, around clutters of French baguette,
And cheese, olives and pepper
They bring in a bottle of unopened
Wine.
This very wine that has sin written all over
This very wine that I forbid myself to look upon
This very wine that my children are supposed
To refrain from.
Yet here they are.
Drinking.
Laughing.
But they change.
The children you raise and appraise
The children you teach, the learned
Right before you, 30 years later,
And they are not the same
Drinking sin.
Talking sin.
No, they are not what you thought
And you have no say, not after 30 years
Not today.
Their glasses clinging,
I lower my gaze, staring at the ant crawling on my shoe
They raise theirs, and ask I break my silence.
But they are asking me to accept and adhere
To their reprisal.
After years of abiding by our dreams
They now turn their back
And drink, and expect.
I bear this heavy guilt, as red and thick as their wine.

On the highway to Baltimore, you can go 65 miles per hour. Once you reach that speed, you no longer feel how fast you are going. Your body and mind both adjust to the speed, you go back to your regular conversation with whoever is accompanying you, and everything outside, the trees, houses, cars, and other objects become smaller and smaller. This is a good speed. It’s not too safe and not too crazy, an average of all the limits.
On our way to Baltimore, the sky splits into two layers of pink and purple. Things are happening fast and I can’t feel if winds are changing, or if this is just what happens on a late September evening. I tell her to look at this pretty sight, but she is watching the road, and what’s ahead. What’s ahead of us is really just one vast pathway, wide and open, limitless, but indefinite. What’s ahead are cars that fly forward in a speed that has long surpassed 65. What’s ahead are birds that fly in shape of a V, the way kids draw them on paper, over and over again. What’s ahead of us, of me and her, is an illusive picture, one of those dreams we created long ago and left abandoned because there was simply no time to ponder about it. Inside that picture, somewhere behind the colored clouds and diffused sounds, we each think of that pleasing state of nature, and there comes a beautiful silence in which we fly forward, in our own dreams, in our own indefinite stopping points.
Mano to ashegh nashodim…Delaye ma par nadaran.
You and I did not fall in love…our hearts have no wings.
Lost in that beautiful, sad song, we drive to Baltimore, meet with M and his wife, and are introduced to M’s college friend Amir. In the night, we walk the dead town, drink coffee, and find things to talk about. We are all the same, lost in our forsaken lands, always retelling the stories of how we got here.
On our way back, in a pitch black curtain, we wish that our hearts had wings. Then, maybe, we could fly, indefinitely.

I like that I sleep on a bed with a green blanket. The design is simple: funky swirls, circles, round, lime and dark. But the metal bars hurt my back when I lean against them to read, or write. At night, as I sleep, turning my body, my feet touch the bars and I feel caged in. I want to break free, but my feet don’t move, I am bounded. This happens often in the night, tossing, turning.
I fall. At last. And there is just darkness, a tunnel in which the subconscious lies. I dream about a boy who holds me. I do not know his name, but he looks familiar, like we’ve met before in another time. The car moves, and she turns her head, looking at us, nodding approval, smiling, sweet and candid. He continues to play with my hair. I am wrapped around him, warm, like how I am wrapped in my blanket. The driver, she doesn’t look back. She drives without words. How peaceful I feel, wrapped in his warmness, and filled with tranquility, still touched by her repeating smile.
Morning. I remember us, and how she smiled like she was happy. But the other one, she had said nothing. My mother had said nothing the whole time, but drove on, somewhere else. She was not ours.

Trembling
Like a child
I run, a little farther
And there is home
Shaking and numb
I can still feel his hands
Holding me against his
Foreign, unknown, cold
His body, a territory I know not
This stranger who holds me
For what seems an eternal time
I pray, for that is all I know
Afraid
Will he take me away?
And then he leaves
I can still hear his motorbike
Fading, the wheels crashing
An eternal ring in my ears
I run, a little farther
And there is home
I am safe
Still, hearing the sound of his fading motorbike
Farther and farther, until no longer…