"Depart and cry,/As I know you will not find a homeland in which you sleep like my chest."
The Challenges [Al-Tahahaddiyat] by Nizar Qabbani
This is what I understand about the city:
there is a man with a flesh door in his chest,
with a brass doorknob only I can see.
I go to him at night, a weevil in her chestnut shell.
I have hung red curtains with white polka dots
on the small window near his spine.
Between spleen and liver,
wedged an overstuffed lazyboy.
Here the city can't sense me.
The light through his skin is dim,
but my own. I have found ground—
yet more air and more escape.
The city's tethered chain surges and strains.
The map on my hand burns—
Go home; I can't find you—
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