Our dumbest argument

It was 2am in someone else’s house, I was dogsitting,
or should I say we were,

and without talking about the strangeness of it, we had

made the bed our own.

It was dark, there were three dogs, the room was hot

But the ceiling fan was too loud to use.

I don’t remember how it started, but

all of a sudden you told me your fridge

was better, because it was emptier than mine.

I didn’t understand how that logic was possible,

unless you were insinuating that my house was dirty,

wasteful, excessive, nouveau riche.

I cried when I realized you were serious.

It hurt at the time, but

I realize now that I wasn’t crying for the

times your mom cooked for just you, and not me

or for when I sat with you when you were too sick

to eat, and so we didn’t eat for a day and a half.

I was crying for the unbridgeable distance between us.

The way my feelings seemed to fall between your fingers like

sand, and your feelings sailed over my head, disguised.

Before you, I didn’t understand what it meant to face, head-on,

a cultural divide. Where was the line between jokes about me

tempting you during Ramadan,

(but not really, because we were

already going against your faith by having sex at all)

And the times you wouldn’t go anywhere near me,

Disgust wrinkling your nose, because I

Smelled like alcohol ?

My cousin, recently back from a semester in Morocco,

Asks me on the beach one day what it felt like

To know you, intimately, and still be part of our

Very traditional, very Catholic, very white family.

I don’t think I knew, then, what it meant to be dating

A guy who was Muslim. I just knew what it was like

To be dating you.