A Love Letter

I want you


                    to remember this 

where I live 
program the coordinates 
into your internal compass
embed the the earth’s magnetic 
field onto your temporal lobe

                    where time and space dwell 
                    as electricity 

shed your armor spell-cast bulletproof
marked with attempts 
on your life
and tattoo a map onto 
your integument
of how to find

                    me

learn to navigate the network
of highways and hidden culverts

                    with your mind’s eye 

a small island 
barely in the Pacific Ocean
10 meager miles off the coast
almost enclosed to an inland sea

                    fly over the land 
                    in your dreams

keep your gas tank full
take the backroads
sleep with your backpack on
don’t take off your shoes
carry water, fire, otc painkillers
at all times 
drive north
until you see
the sun set

                    Ishtar rise in its place

                    don’t stop

I will find the last 
boat to pick you up
or row across the strait 
myself
to bring you 

                    here 
                    if you need me

to give you every penny
of my fuck-you-money 

                    I will

give you stitches 
with the good sewing thread 
I’ve been saving
kiss your bruised 
crown
mend the bone they broke 
for the stone you threw

                    chew 

leaves of bitter Yarrow
my spit binds us together 
your skin closes around the wound

                    I will

offer you my last pack of cigarettes 
or box of bullets 
and still save us each one

---

Veera Sulaiman is a Finnish Palestinian writer, community organizer, Tatreez artist, and herbalist. Her written work explores the intersections of mixed identity, language, alternate futures, intergenerational memory, animism, art as resistance and propaganda as art. As a daughter and granddaughter of forcibly displaced Palestinian refugees, she is interested in chronicling how our worlds continue to end, and what endures after those calamities.