The Promise of Fantasy

You promised me quixotic love

While I consumed your words with insatiable hunger

And began drawing up blueprints of ineffable devotion and affection

You pledged not to betray or abandon me,

And vowed to shield me from further disloyalty and heartache because, according to you,

I had already "suffered too much"

You gave me late nights on your balcony

Confessing the perpetual mourning and idealization of our fathers

Cooing and caressing me as I recounted my incremental disillusionment with love

You gave me warm summer evenings within the red walls of the medina

You gave me strolls past the snake charmers, dancers, and acrobats

in the Plaza Djemaa el Fna

Past the dates sellers, and piles spices, red, orange, yellow, and brown

Past the henna girls chasing me in veils of black

Under the moonlit Koutobia Mosque, you gave me your depth and sensitivity

You gave me fresh orange juice with sugar

You gave me the small sharks posing as fish in the Menara gardens

You gave me the Valle de Ourika, Casablanca, Essaouira, Rabat, Fes, and Tangier

You gave me the Atlas Mountains, the promise of the Sahara

And a love affair with Marrakech

You gave me my name in Arabic

You gave me Omm Kalthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez

Berber Music, Shaabi, and Rai

You gave me camel rides, goats in trees, babuchas, kaftans

And Moroccan mint tea

You gave me “carino,” “amor,” “hobbi,” “habibati,” “kabida,” “guapa” and more

You gave me the loving words of compassion and tender affection I unknowingly feared I would forever crave

You gave me a world of fantasy I later packed into a dusty box of pictures and postcards with flowers, tickets and trinkets

If only for today,

Let me remember you this way