...it's really day 26 or 27... i fell into a swarm of time serenading me with the whispers of Lovers...
...on day 23... four days ago... monday... i think... i reparked the car and walked...
...we walked along astoria's ethnic trump stronghold... the flags spangled ammu's selawar and my beard into a ban that was aired through the proches and sports cars vrooming like pickup trucks... they promised an end...
...in the end we will be soil... both your flag and mine food for worms... our bodies may even touch... become the same field of dandelion spreading our seed with the wind...
...we walked past the dog park... the cyclist rushing past ammu pretended to be on a motorcycle, vrooming with his mouth so she would speed up... i understood... i understood that we didn't know each other... in babylon our individualism... our essential separation makes disrespect... disregard... speed... a reality... i suffer from it too... like the insomnia... watching lives flip me from one side of the floor to another... until it is time to eat suhoor... before fajr...
...between humans and cars the pigeons lingered invisible with only their droppings proof of their existence... they were more of a presence decades ago... shouting at us from the lamposts to run as the kids with bats and broom sticks ran behind us... as some of them shot rocks at us... one time there was a war... our gang and theirs... we didn't know we were a gang... me and my brothers and the rest of us under 12... but the other ganga, required this of us... i watch rocks nib away at the earlobes and foreheads of my brothers and friends... we came home defeated... running into the shower to wash off our ruin... equiped with stories of our wounds as a byproduct of our baseball basketball adventures... not urban america... not the land our parents came to for savlation in education and civility... we already held the truth a hostage at our young age for fear of even greater ruin....
...we got bread to break for supper, after sun down, wondering if it may be our last meal, or the great supper of isa in the night of the prophet muhammad's (s.a.w) ascension from madinah to jereusalem... the signs were abound, as ammu pointed out - overcast, cool, rainy, feeling energized... and it was an odd number... our numbers in savings and rent and bills and deaths from covid versus heart attacks vs cancer, to how much we saved on the sourdough bread... kept us in a constant state of inventory...
...we prayed... inshALLAH... knowing we had no clue about any of this other than the Guidance we've been given - to remain humble... and even if you don't the Hour ticks and it is plain to see as day into night...
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