by Noeme Tabor–Farjani
I try to afford the delusions of being at home with myself settling
like a scavenger of fantasies packed in forgotten luggage.
The early bird catches the crescent spring moon on this last quarter
of our first one hundred days after migration.
Time inches, a seducer languid in my bed while I cast myself into
the mercies of the moon cycle and dispose of my stashing of regrets.
I await my fill of days in this branded golden cage, complete with amenities
and a luxury of whims lined up as to-do list since I have nowhere to go.
I am obedient to rules, regulating my affairs around calls for prayers, contented
with a thousand consolation prizes made of well-enunciated “InshaAllah”.
The rectangular walls are whiteboards of hope, my sole preoccupation other than
the guessing games I play with the hours while I figure my way around here.
It’s hard to tell right from wrong as I trace the Moorish curves of the window railing,
like the maze of lies that coil around reason tinted with excuses.
This little creature perched on the sill must be comparing my space with the sky,
perhaps planning where to fly next or deciding to stay a bit longer.
It pecks the tiny crack on the wall, crumbs of bread lay on the bullet hole. A feeder
by chance that was once a hazard to the robin’s ancestors who eat and worry later.
They seem to have no need for fantasies, but who knows. InshaAllah, soon, maybe.
Noeme Grace C Tabor-Farjani, PhD, is a Tripoli, Libya-based Filipino poet and memoirist. She is the author of the poetry collections The Gospel of Grace (Newcomer Press, 2021) and Inspecting Wastelands (Ukiyoto, 2023) as well as Letters from Libya: Letters-in-Memoirs (2018), a prose chapbook on her family’s escape from war.