Dali

There are some things women only learn in their kitchens / how to hold knives / how to slice with one, sharp cut / how to salt a dish playfully / and how to dance from the table to the fridge to the cutting board to the sink and dance right back just to rinse and repeat / pay more attention to your mother when she does it and you’ll learn things not even the greatest chefs can teach you / because its their secret 

My mother taught me the art of making coffee / that you cannot rush the process / that you must pour water into a French press then wait some calculated seconds for it to bloom / then add more water and wait some more and it goes on and on and on…

My mother taught me home is the place you carry like perfume carries memory / it is where you learn your favorite recipes / where you walk the streets blindly without needing directions 

My mother taught me diaspora is lonely / it is forgetting to pray like your father taught you / it is calling your landline back home at three in the morning just to hear a familiar voice / comforting you in a language foreign to everybody else around you / it is translating and translating and translating till your native tongue feels strange / it is befriending loss because tickets to weddings and funerals cost too much / it is grieving what you remember and grieving what you forget / it is pretending this place could be enough / pretending you don’t notice the question behind the question: but where are you really from?

My mother taught me home isn’t the place you come from or where you’re going / that it has been next to me from the very beginning / home is: everywhere she is and heaven is somewhere beneath her feet.