‘The line starts here!’ the officer shouts.
But no one here believes the line ever begins.

​

They have stood in too many lines
          that led to other lines,
doors that opened 
          into heavier doors,
lists that carried their names
          only to cross them out.

​​

Still, they arrive
          with keys to vanished houses,
          with names of three countries 
                    all called home,
          with folders sweating in their hands
                    each page a thinner 
                       version of a life
                              reduced to

                               a story, 
                                pared 

                                to a 
                                word.

​

A boy holds his grandfather’s card,
exile’s heirloom
from Haifa to Yarmouk,
renewed until even the office disappeared.
 

Behind us, a Yemeni woman balances
a plastic bottle, a sleeping child,
and the same answer rehearsed
a thousand times.
 

Rumours move faster than files.
A man whispers of another office:
open at night, off the books
three hundred liras a head
the price climbing with the dollar.
 

A child hums a tune from Mosul,
the Kurdish verses unsung.

​

The line starts here. 
But it moves. 
Not forward.
But down.
Then in.
Then under.
 

In the shifting seam
an old woman’s chair,
scrapes along it,
the child’s hum
frays, 
tugs,
loose.