You, standing on the disputed land.
Over there, with your ear to the sky.
What do you pray for when you go to bed at night?
Does the old muse of belonging visit you too, whispering?
Painting the promise of what could be behind your shut
eyes, not yet asleep?
They’ll have you believe that I care little for the
rhythm of your breath. They'll say I want you dead.
I don't –
I don't know what else they tell you, the old men
still declaring victory by the number of lives taken.
The olive tree, this one here,
holds root with the one
on your side,
both older than our ancestors a stone throw away.
Dirt doesn't have a language for me and mine,
it belongs only to itself. And whatever name
you give a valley, it remains a valley, mysterious
to me as it is to you,
beyond our passing witness.
Tell me, what grows there? In that valley –
over there.
In your mother's stunned eyes.
What germinates in your heart?
Have you too seen lightning strike across the day sky?
Have you too stood afraid and taken by tomorrow,
wondering what might still live?
I have. Do this –
place a palm to your belly and breathe. If I were there,
I’d do it for you, hold in my naked hand your bare
sacral breath.
Listen, I’ve been told the earth doesn’t care to name
whoever crawls on her ancient body.
She doesn’t even care to tell the difference
between blood and water,
nor tongue,
nor bone.
Moudi Sbeity is a first-generation Lebanese-American poet and transpersonal therapist, and the author of the forthcoming books Want A World (Fernwood Press, 2006) and Habibi Means Beloved (University of Utah Press, 2026). In a previous life, Moudi co-owned and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant in Salt Lake City. Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah in 2014. As a person who stutters, they are passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression. They call the Rocky Mountains of Boulder, Colorado home.
