Habibi is what your face looks like in the morning
Moving through me quietly and before me then
When you kiss me good night and fall asleep first
To the blaring news of death from far and near
Kismat is locking eyes at that meeting we were both asked
Not to attend on campus because it might offend us
Matching ourselves and our families and our fate
To a history that changed us both when we did not want it
Oud is what I hear when we walk down the street together
Listening to the night crawl in and the scent of dusk
Surrounding us and shaking us until we feel their pain
From holes shattered into walls a few feet ahead of us
Alam is seeing their tiny hands stretching for me
Dirty fingers pressed against their ruddy cheeks
The curls of their hair covered in dust and debris
Their ghostface eyes screaming, running out of air
Shukr is what I say when my keys open our door
And I find your worn leather shoes against the wall
The sound of the faucet in the kitchen against glass
Your voice still hanging here so many days later
Samina Hadi-Tabassum is an associate professor at the Erikson Institute in Chicago. Her first book of poems, Muslim Melancholia (2017), was published by Red Mountain Press. She has published poems in Tin House, Clockhouse, Conduit, East Lit Journal, Soul-Lit, Journal of Postcolonial Literature, Papercuts, The Waggle, Indian Review, Classical Poets, Mosaic, Main Street Rag, Connecticut River Review, Pilgrimage Literary Journal, riksha, and These Fragile Lilacs. Her poems were performed on stage as a part of the Kundiman Foundation and Emotive Fruition event focusing on Asian American poetry in 2016. She was a 2018 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Performance finalist for the Guild Complex competition in Chicago.