Brunch During Ramadan
It happened in Virginia, where so many of the parts of my life that keep me Other happen. Once, a Somali lady (a head shorter than me, slim-hipped as a young girl, both wrists glinting with dowry gold) painted henna flowers on both my hands, up my arms to the elbow, both my feet, up my shins. In a small, scrubbed apartment, her two daughters played around me, never touching the wet black hibiscus twining my limbs. For two weeks after, until the…