I hear the adhan & answered my father’s call

seven nights into my eighteenth birthday, i swallowed the muslim faith

                            & my throat s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d into pure light.

                       took patience for sausage & snacked

till it shortens into the length of a salaf‘s pant.

at first light, i fueled my tongue with bismillah

& twitched      

                      & twitched      my nose

till words pull out of the black cat breathing inside my lungs.

                          say the quickest road to light is narrow?

i searched       

                    & searched     for rabbi between the holes in my chest button.

at an ijtimaa’  of ahlu sunnah wal jama’ah

i gathered myself into the biggest mouth,

& sang       

             & sang    in praise of sohaabahs with four wives &

                countless bastards.

                                       rahimohullah

      chilled out of my lips,

& almost molding attentive ears into an effigy of snowballs.

in this poem, i trace the qiblah back into my father’s shrine.

peel       

             & peel       till what is left of my body is a small bird

folding   

               & folding       into a forest of teeth.

where light ends, i begin to undress,

& once again,

                        i’m my father’s son, calling unto his father’s gods,

with broken tajweed

t

  u

     m

          b

               l

                  i

                     n

                          g

                                down the north-line of my lips.

during a tamarin on ʻaqīda, a boy with nose wet as a crab ditch

           claimed i took after his mother’s absence;

                  smelt of roasted pork &

                                                               named me after a shade of shirk,

but rather than chant istigfar after the midday solat,

i broke into sajda,

asking

             & asking god

how to wear light

                                   without whitening out of my father’s name.