Itinerary

the start. 	the crossing of borders. 	the migrants in migrant clothing—dilapidated
	walls roofed by the sight of overlords. 	the destination a sewage with salary.
the excavated back of a dream. 	the myths where we are always stealing something.
the danger sign in our rubiginous faces. 	the preference for tall and white. 	the eyes
	who look at us but don’t see us entering their lives. 	the imagination of home
	we carry to places. 	then a message from home: the crossing of sclerosis
	on a bridge under the kidney. 		the migrants continue. 	then a new message
	from home: the wife you need is your cousin from Quetta. 	the stories
	my partner knows too much.	in one story: the girl to be wed refused to be wed
	and was later found in front of her apartment burning alive. 		in a new story: a stray
	boy who was tracked by his brother killed him outside a mosque.
the stray who loved a stray. 	the soft animals decomposing inside my partner.
the migrants continue submerging in the loam of water. 	the migrants still impounded
	in the word outsider, thirteen digits in our alien card, a world apart from where
	wounds heal. 	the new plates and water bottles and cartons of cigarettes we share.
the dirt in my teeth melting in his mouth. 	the mouth only we can enter
	and see each other even in the darkest. 	the night we knew something bad
	was happening in the future. 	the generations that came before us broke in
	by the rented window and released the monsters that wanted us hurting each other.
the known origin. 	the rule icon. 	the father emperor of all languages.
the aircraft technician who always came home drunk. 	the strong legs under the rain
	of bullets. 	the war-born toughness. 	the iron from a woman’s shadow
	when leaving in a coffin. 	the tradition of saying sorry to a photograph.
the violence we have witnessed in every newspaper. 	the violence violence violence
	to which we didn’t know we belonged. 	that too often violence is the hemisphere
	our families screwed in our head to navigate alone. 	the migrants walk on coal.
the farther we walk the lonelier we become. 	the agitation of living in the present,
	an evidence when detained by a history of wounding. 	the home we can’t
	dislodge from our backs. 	the migrants continue walking in different streets.
the text message from my partner: 	if we could just talk, i won’t hurt you again.
the new start. 	the eidetic cloud formation that appeared and was a staircase,
	there’s no other way of seeing that. 	the height from where outlawed bodies fall.
the hurt most of all to say: 	i thought we wouldn’t have to start dead.

Read more from Issue 22.1.