it’s five minutes after therapy / my brain feels squeaky-clean and new / body cleansed of a nightmare from hours before / the sun hits my back through the window perched high up behind my bed / a migraine pulses through my skull / the fan on the bedside table whirs out a cool summer song / babu roams the first floor to find a place to sleep, i can hear the jingle of his collar through the walls / there’s a tuna sandwich on my desk and chips with it / the morning is warm and so is my back / i tuck away my therapy journal into the covers, lie back down / read the quran on a dim phone screen / pray and pray and pray
it’s an hour after therapy / i’m sleepy and dazed and i have showered / i smell of vanilla and sugar / the way i did last friday / racing down the highway / breathing myself in while fantasizing about a nose brushing against my throat / her telling me how badly she would like to indulge / so she does / she does and does and does / so i do / i roll over, aching in areas painful, pleasant / joints and elsewhere / swallow a gulp of gatorade without really stopping to taste the glacier freeze / squeaky-clean, in the body and mind / new by how i’m made through tender care, steady fingers / new and new and new, the way allah has fashioned the smoothness of my lower back down / brown curves peeking out behind blue-and-cream pillows / the migraine lurches on / i lay there, mouth pressed to the skin above a cowboy tattoo on my inner forearm / i pray and pray and pray