wow. thank you for that. you are wonderfully expressive, a beautiful writer. and i feel you. deeply. i hope that this writing is healing, that the world, gets to see it. peace. --e

Untitled e.m. monteiro for Khadro and Hodan What I remember is hazy with pain. Picking me up in your brother’s mini-van to take me to the parking lot plantation where you used to slave. Giving those people in dark mink and darker tux simple refugee lines like, “I take care of car, sir. Nothing to worry. Nothing to need,†that unrecognizable accent crimson colored like your uniformed shirt. Why are we here in the wee hours of morning, after weeks of silence in undercover of highway overpass, tucked where there are fewer cars, where I hold you. It hurts to hold you knowing I have no choice but to comfort as your xooyo lays dying. Never left alone for a second, a tribe of children that love in shifts; pain that is shared. (For one week I pulled my hair out in the darkness that comes before light, alone. Unclean, I pleaded with Maxamed knowing you did not believe. The dishes remained unwashed, the plants unwatered, and when I told you I began the process of fasting all this out of my organs you laughed; you called me ‘Drama’). You whisper undercover of tinted windows: “My quilt is shattered. There is nothing to patch up.†You are weak, and it is I who must hold-up your body. It is the Haitian nurses and your sisters who stand stone faced and silent as the slow passing of your mother goes through their bones. You reach down and manipulate my legs, for access, a leak changed to flooding in an instant, those women, hard and silent; though I wish, I am not unbreakable like them. “I would like to trade places with my xooyo…†you say, the headlights traveling the highway beside us invading the sanctity of this space. Do you really want to trade places with the woman who lived her own life to make sure your life would be better, pulled her hair out from the roots and screamed in all directions on empty ears? I wonder, while Maxamed pursued the art of oratory, if Khadija sat in darkness; if she stayed focused on her money her business her children the life she had to lead beyond him; could you have lived with that pain? (it will be later and you will tell me how your father will not go to your mother’s grave, the trip you planned as brothers made a detour. “He would rather drink tea with his homies’ and argue about what’s happenin’ back home,†you say, reject my response, grab your bag and slam the door. “As though your father chooses to remember your mother in this way? May be his memory can’t be measured in square footage?†With you, some places cannot be touched). Your sisters still go to work: phone calls around the world, plans for people who will be arriving; they get the money straight, make sure the men are maintaining; while you worry about history and a past that cannot be escaped. You flee; you stay in one place.

"Fake" e.m. monteiro --for Abdifatah2, and Russell It was the lipstick that did it, crusty cracked red and you smelled it. It was the fluorescent green lollypop, the illusion I created that I don’t smoke anymore. I called it closure but you knew I was not trying to close it knew I was trying to open a door came to the meeting because you wanted to see how I would be and I was all fake, and you were all front, and nothing is really clear, nothing is loyal and true to what we said we would do. I represent an evol/love monster in your mind feeding off of the chump change I gave you to make ends meet. (I can freestyle too, but you put me up against the wall homeboy, made me desperate inspiration. I knelt in front of you and wanted to tell you how you paid me back every penny that you ever owed me, I appreciate you: oral contracts, paper and ink, life and soul). You say you’ve been invited to 3 different parties by 3 different girls… but I know nakedness decked out in your winter gear, like you’re tryna trip at a party instead of chillin with your boys? Please; tell R&R I said hi. **** you for playing this game; Yeah, I’m fake but not that fake. The ½ black American, ½ black Somali, wants to know “w’sup, waryaa?†why he can’t be included in the testimonial documentary you are creating on video. And what do I tell him? You ain’t the right kind of refugee?