Arab

I remember those moments of pure clarity,

            before dark clouds entered me.

Walking to school cold, alone,

             unafraid.

When my biggest worry was,

            “Why doesn’t Stacey like me?”

Then,

all of a sudden, a child

writing letters to her grandmother,

 decorated with loneliness.

I remember the feeling,

and this deep sense of knowing;

I’ll never belong here.

Telling her,

It’s impossible to make friends here, Hajjiya!

They keep asking about Osama,

I don’t understand who he is or what he did,

I just know they keep saying I love him?

I keep wanting to ask them who he is,

then ask how can I love him?

But something about me, tells them I know him? 

Maybe the cloth on my head?

I remember those days before.

Days, gone,

perished.

Days that turned me into an

Angry Arab Woman,

Fueled by deluded,

colonial

regression.