Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle

Dear Uncle, is everything you love foreign

or are you foreign to everything you love?

We’re all animals and the body wants what it wants,

I know. The blonde said Come in, take off

your coat and What do you want to drink?

Love is not haram but after years of fucking

women who cannot pronounce your name,

you find yourself in the foreign food aisle,

beside the turmeric and the saffron,

pressing your face into the ground, praying

in a language you haven’t used in years.