My Name on His Tongue: Poems

a moonlit visit

52 a moonlit visit also for B up before dawn I peek out at the full yellow moon read a page or two for inspiration glance at the author’s picture . . . your eyes stare back sitting across from me in my quiet house your long fingers resting on my table your soft brown eyes gaze at me more than twenty years has passed since your lanky east stretched out on the green lawn of our Midwestern college though we were close in age I was younger, innocent, optimistic never a heroin user or abused child I was your clean self in penance you often made me cry on your way to becoming my best friend confidant in all matters my other half but never my boyfriend in the American sense of the word you led a double life then West and East 53 drinking, sex, and parties with them politics, stories, nighttime walks with me fingers entwined we walked in the rain up the steps of a cathedral swapping tales of the moon and lovers made them ours you fiddled with the heavy silver ring you always wore God’s message scribbled across it (for years it amazed me that for all your drinking you never lost that ring God never forsook you) it took three years of walks and talks of sleeping side by side as brother and sister for you to tell me you loved me eastern style like in folktales even as you loved woman after woman western style like in movies had sex with that tall blonde girl behind the bushes by the dorms locked yourself up for days with the giggly Jewish girl who went through several Pakistani boyfriends but when I arrived early for a visit 54 you wouldn’t open the door for me until you had put on a shirt would not let me walk alone to a friend’s house in early evening eastern love in the West even the Midwest is tiresome, more so when it reeks of liquor cruelty and suicide threats how many times did I empty your glass take you home tuck you in to sleep off your self-loathing? how many times did I listen as you plotted your own death? still too innocent to understand that some things cannot be undone or fixed it took years to break free untangle myself from your knots and snarls shake off those long fingers that held me just barely above the surface the moon this morning your eyes in that novelist’s face seeing you sitting at my table I missed you terribly 55 went searching for you in cyberspace but there were only wispy traces are you dead? or back in Pakistan or in Las Vegas or Texas with an American wife or sleeping with men or sticking needles in your arm as you did once long ago or have you always been here with me my other self my lost Majnoon1 1. majnoon means crazy; Qais and Laila (also called Majnoon Laila) is a classic seventh-century love story in which a man loses his mind over unrequited love. ...