HEAD-GEAR

I never wrote my post Ramadan thoughts because then it would mean it was over. A blessed month is time for house cleaning. I rearranged my lists of things to do that I haven't done and reorganized my boots according to the probability of slipping and falling in preparation for November snow.
Buffalo is brilliantly autumnal and jobless and when the sun sets its like a hole-punch. Days are spent at a local coffee-shop that constantly reminds me that it is not the Hungarian Pastry shop. I have been watching reruns of Law & Order and they always place the scenes in actual shops in recognizable intersections in the city, so now I feel free to drop the names of my favorite places in my writing. I like to think it also proves that I am real.

Ideas about routes and streets and places have been blowing off steam around the corner and I'm starting to round them up from off the bathroom floor. I think they are all just sleeping but some of them look like they might be dead. They are blueish and don't move when I poke them with a stick.
These are ideas about places I've had and emphasizing that I feel displaced from them and probably replaced by another introverted foreigner who wanders the streets and befriends cafe waiters. They are an easy target because they always work in the same place and I always know where to find them, and I have never been one so I can't gauge how creepy it is. The recent place where I used to take up space is still there, maybe two sizes too small for me now.

I wear my old dresses as A-line shirts.
I hid all my stockings.
I look at all the books on my shelf and can't help but fantasize that all those spines that say SPACE were attached to books about blacks holes and meteorites and using the word fantasize makes me wish it didn't sound so much like "infanticide."
It's a form of worship to study the stars. From my rooftop I can watch them as I drink copious amounts of coffee to try and get work done at night to make up for my lethargy in the holy fasting days of the mid-month when it is recommended to fast. I do it if I stay awake until the morning meal but usually fall asleep an hour before after watching consecutive reruns of Law & Order and think about those places where they are solving their crimes and how they aren't just spaces used by criminals to commit brutal murders, those places actually exist and there are people crossing those streets right now, just like all the people and places in Tangier that I write about from here.

Under the stars we feel more clarity knowing our names are written up there somewhere
along with our loves and losses and lives in general.
Makes you feel more confident about your abilities in general.
Thinking about pluto and space, it's the appropriate place for that. Curiosity, asking why we are where we are in life and why the stars look like they are blinking like they are watching me too.
Pluto is tired and the stars are looking back at me, and God knows that if I can pull off the old wardrobe, I can pull off the new. And He knew that if I can pull off the nose, I can wear a hijab without causing a commotion. But can't promise I won't stop traffic. Because I already promised so many people that I would stop traffic.