People did not even need to travel to the Middle East, as exhibitions and art dealers brought

the Middle East to them.

—The British Museum
down the street mawadah tells me she misses egypt but sometimes egypt is brought to her

in berlin        she says        i saw the bust of nefertiti & waved at her from afar

because there were borders separating us because touching her face

would only bring her home & i guess they don’t want that

summer says they were never this careful with our bodies
an orientalist calls me a bedouin chasing a fool’s paradise

& maybe i am a fool        the soles of my all stars are rubbed raw

from all the chasing & chasing & chasing

but hey        at least i know what my tombstone looks like
in new york i think of edward saïd when fatima goes to class in her

periwinkle coat & she tells me she feels arab everywhere

so i remember him saying he never liked going to museums that much

(i also know what it feels to burn under the limelight)

instead i tell her        it’s okay        you just crossed an ocean
we’re at the british museum & mawadah points at a stolen artifact

& jokes about bringing it back home but listen        what if we actually do

what if this dissolves the border & all our wounds

what if our dead are no longer dead what if it wipes the canvas anew

whatifwhatifwhatifwhatifwhatif
zein says to figure a border i must first start with the body

but i’m tired from all the reading & stretching & rubbing my shoes loose

trying to uproot/unmap my skeleton from the earth

if the body is buried elsewhere        what is home

if nothing remains of it what is home

stuck outside its geography the same way they stole the moon
at the biennale mama comes eye-to-eye with some

sculptures from outside        her stance splintered & hung dry

                    she asks if this is colonization & i say yes

          i don’t bother touching their faces at all