What stays: his tennis rackets, the skittish

rescue dog. What goes: an oriental rug, every

last book. Each coming day calls to mind

a thing I’ve forgotten. A jar or small table that after

months away, I did not recall was there. The list grows.

His. Mine. Frightening, how little was ours, how objects

slide so easily back to their owners. As easily as a plane

ticket appeared in my hand when I knew. The same ease

with which I crossed two oceans to hold the hand, soft and

brown as vellum, of a friend, to lay in her lap, a bright tunic

sopping my wet, muffled sobs. The sickness comes, as

I expected, waves of nausea and the exhausting, violent tremors

of a person flung onto tile, hunched over a toilet, giving

it back. My friend cannot explain why, and when I moan

for answers will only say something wants out. When it passes,

the thing exorcised, we shop for the trinkets that will please

women at home: gold bangles, soaps and notecards. My head

is covered, then uncovered again. Shoes removed, then

replaced. The car stops once more at Gulshan Circle

and a leper, a now familiar sight, raises his shirt that we

might see the lake of boils that pools across his belly. My friend

translates, sometimes, tells me what the beggars say: Mostly

sister, please. Anything, a little something. Their hands cupped

against the glass, peering in, they plead endlessly, the way I asked

him again and again, always knowing the answer. Still, the man

taps the window, stares at this blond stranger. My hands form

the familiar tower of blessing, pressed palm to palm, and I drop

my head to shake it slowly. All the ways I know to say cannot.