What happened one night while listening to Allen Ginsberg...

Couscous

First you laughed at the clothespin we used to shut the bag of couscous

Those are only for clothes! you cried.

Next you laughed at the way we cooked the couscous

It’s wrong! you shouted accusingly.

Then you laughed at our pronunciation of the word “couscous”

“Couscous!” you giggled uncontrollably, It means “vagina”!

You laughed at the word “butt” on the talcum powder in our bathroom

At the funny card on my wall (with the semi-nude photo on the front)

You laughed at my spelling in Arabic (you forget I graded your essay in English and you can’t spell for shit)

You hooted at the half-empty bottle of wine I forgot to hide from your virgin eyes

It’s such a funny game, isn’t it?  My life.  It’s hilarious.  Trust me, I know.

Well you know what I think of your Everlasting Love Story (as you call it)?

The one where your “fiancé” is 10 years your senior

Lives in America

Is married with 5 kids

And yet he tells you to lose weight, not to wear makeup so the men on the street don’t steal you from him, to be home every night before 10?

I think it’s fucking mad.

 

 

Everlasting Love Story

You tell me your love is Everlasting.

What movie did you get that from?

Or did you see it on one of those cheesy Engagement announcements on display in the one thousand windows of the one thousand photo studios on my street? The ones with the girl with seven thousand layers of foundation and another three thousand of blush, that’s ten thousand layers all together, ten thousand and a veil, between you and the outside world, afraid that someone might get a little too close to your soul without all that armor, that fortress wall between you and man, you and woman, you and me, you and the rest of us, you and God?  Under the fake-antiqued photo, the decorated virgin her eyes gazing in perfect pose at the flat-and-furniture-owning-dowry-endowing eyes of the man, should we, perhaps, put plastic grapes in her hair? Everlasting Love Story, scrawled in white lace under the photo.

Do you know what “everlasting” means?