Have you not seen that all those who are in the heavens and all those who are in the earth prostrate themselves before Allah, and so do the sun and the moon, and the stars and the mountains, and the trees, and the beasts, and so do many human beings…
—Al-Qur’an 22:18
Sajdah
Sahar RomaniHere you are nearest
to where you are from
But when my mouth forgets
to bow in ode
Subhanallah
Alhamdulillah
am I departing from a self
I was meant to become
After birth my father palmed a path
with his hand to my ear
as his father did once
whispered a call in Arabic
Come to prayer Come to success…
There is none worthy of worship except—
I learned scripture in sound before sense
memorized music without meaning
How long since the choir
of my toes, tenor of my knees
kneeled east, northeast
towards a door of worship
Does God need a door
if God is everywhere
I wish my mother answered
it was never for God
our choreography of the body
sequence of attention
There was an era
I offered my head
five times a day
along the arc of the sun
muscled with belief
or by histories of posture
after posture until I could not see
between habit and conviction
the way I kissed a woman once
though we were no longer lovers
my shoulders dipped into hers
as if I pooled into the past
or did I ripple towards a future
with knowledge
my mouth did not yet know
how to shape into syllable
The prayer rug still waits near the window
in case tomorrow
my spine folds and lifts
heart above head
a gesture I loved as a child
without understanding
Sahar Romani is a poet and educator. Her poems appear in The Believer, Guernica, Poetry Society of America, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and NYU, where she earned an MFA and teaches first-year writing.