I.
In Egypt, you’re a thirty-dayer or a forty-dayer, depending on how long you fast. Ramadan is shorter than Lent. Americans have little patience for the holy mathematics of abstention. We build houses for our cars and expect the dessert to be decadent.
Unless we’re on a diet or using the word “intermittent” and once again divorcing science from the spirit.
II.
Fasting means you have to eventually break the fast. Otherwise it’s starvation. Fasting means food when the moon is a bright belly overhead. Otherwise it’s famine.
Fasting means your spirit feasts on what the body holds already within itself, so close to unbreakable fullness. Fasting means an angel or two in your bones, the miracle of making space.
III.
This poem may be the only place you are asked to know that inflation in Lebanon hit 123% in January. The reporters have no fine similes or comforting metaphors, and neither does the poet. At sunset, the believers weep. Desperation is eating us alive.
IV.
In a compelling version of the truth, the dua is a conversation between the Lover and the Beloved in which they both become Love.
Half-heartedness is a mask.
One way forward is to kneel in the sand, in the rubble of what you expected your life to look like, and bow down.
A prayer is a world in which the light is a Bakerwoman with loving hands. Grant me light upon light, here in my open palms.