Bismillah

                      After Ghinwa Jawhari

Beneath the sheets piled 
on us, our ankles flounder 
and finally move to touch, 

warm bone pressed to warm 
bone, sweat flocking to 
our thighs and the roots 

of our hair. We whisper 
shyly before we sleep bismillah--
the language our mothers spoke 

and brought to their bellies 
for us to learn, vowels leaking like milk 
cartons with cut-out hearts. 

Bismillah, meaning not good 
night but meaning I wish you
again the tremendous rest 

of a prayer leaving the body
before you have remembered 
to open your mouth--

instinctive, God carrying 
proudly the small gift 
out of your heart like a petal 

sunk in rainwater, still
dripping. We knew 
bismillah before we knew 

the book or the holy rug, the phrase 
coming and coming again 
as if through a dream. It was 

a dream to lie with you, weeks 
later, in the soft place 
under the kitchen sink, 

from where we could hear 
a bird opening its beak to bend 
to eat on the sill or sing, 

from where we, too, sang
and did not think, bismillah 
flooding our tongues, 

our mothers’ footsteps 
approaching the home, meat and yogurt 
cradled in their arms like children.

Back to: Issue Ten

Next: Wanda Delgane

Sarah Fathima Mohammed, daughter of Indian Muslim immigrants, is a poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been honored for her poetry at the White House and has performed at PBS's Poetry in America, Carnegie Hall, and the San Francisco Opera House. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Cream City Review, Rattle, and wildness. She was born in 2005.