Night Train

Hidden Ledger No. 7: Private Issue

Dream Fragment

I am in a hammam in Istanbul.
The marble is so hot I can feel it through my knees.
A woman I don’t recognize pours water over my shoulders
from a copper bowl.
She scrubs me with a kese mitt until my skin comes off
in gray rolls.

I try to say thank you.
My mouth is full of iris petals.
Iris germanica- not edible, I know this-
but I can’t spit them out.
Bitter. Astringent. The tongue drying shut. Suede.
Then they’re persimmon peels-
unripe Diospyros, that chalky tannic drag
that makes your whole mouth forget how to swallow.

The room drops out.

I am in a greenhouse now-
Victorian iron and glass, the kind they built
to hold empires worth of stolen botanicals.
Kew, maybe, or the old conservatory in Golden Gate Park
before they fixed the roof.
Brugmansia hanging like bells no one should ring.
A sign that says DO NOT TOUCH
and the fence around it bent
where someone already did.

I am filling my pockets with kitab-
small silver cases, folded Ge’ez prayers inside,
the clasps tarnished, some of them dented
like they’ve been gripped too hard.
I don’t read Ge’ez.
I know this by the weight.

A guard walks past.
Doesn’t see me.
Or sees me and decides it isn’t worth it.

I’m on a night train-
could be the Balkans, could be anywhere
the windows are black and the compartment smells
like Cuban cigar smoke and tangerine peel.
A woman across from me is nursing a baby.
She unbuttons her blouse with one hand
and tucks a small blade into the diaper bag with the other.
She doesn’t look at me.
That’s how I know she sees me.

I open my hand.
The kitab are gone.
Just a customs stamp on my wrist I don’t remember getting.
Not the passport- the skin.
Somehow this is normal.
Somehow I know it’s permanent.