Mélange

Hind calls me mélange with a smile -

but on a crooked side street she likes my accent

and in the hammam she tells me I scrub like the Moroccans do

Her father and I cannot speak

in this house in the Ocean

but with gentle shriveled laughter like dried fruit

he taps the table

when the sheep in the loft looks at me

and points to the cages

when the yellow birds sing

He asks how many hours from

San Francisco to Rabat? and how do you say in Spanish? and he points,

borrego - borrego - borrego - until he gets it right

inhale of ammonia and livestock,

folded hands on stained tablecloth -

I think I have been here before

In the prayer room,

I speak French braids,

Hind's hair thick and oily with the

tangles of the medina,

Kerima's soft and clean from the

new apartment in Salé,

and Saida's is long, long, long and

falling from her head scarf in waves

and the women laugh when I am surprised

My feet are not dizzy

(as I thought they would be)

on the avenues of kings,

between Andalusian walls,

behind the mosque on the hill,

in the streams of the Turkish bath,

at the mouth of the Mediterranean

I say I am maghribiya,

watching tile explode like sun,

like feet dipping into freshwater,

unsure of what is at the core

of these concentric circles

Woman of the place where the sun sets,

I am migrating from west coast to west coast

and I liked that you believed me when I said

I've been here before

and I am

two blocks from the Atlantic

but still I forget, this is edge of the world