50:16

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Weekly, the Saturday school teacher would remind us

that God is closer to you than your jugular vein,

how she would lift her chin and point to her own,

tap like a drum her stretched neck every time

she impressed this lesson, this sixteenth verse

pulled from Surah Qaf, and so that is where

I imagined God always, tucked where the sound

of throbbing and gurgling is loud, where He appears

and reappears in the form of rhythmic beats,

so accessible to my hands; closer to you

than your jugular vein I hummed when I spotted

the spot on his neck, a modest protuberance, felt

only between my index finger and thumb, this blotch

or blot, half dot, so many ugly words:

mole, blemish, pigmented, or as I stare at it,

a chocolate chip, half melted and smudged,

the color of pecan, drop of thick maple, a brownie crumb

lodged, pulsating faintly with all the power beneath it,

behind it, large heavy veins carry oxygen-empty cells

from his head to his heart — sometimes I pull at it

when he is busy, not paying attention, on a phone call,

pinching it carefully over and over with envy,

this beauty mark, a sufferer of my jealousy —

why don’t you switch places with me,

let me dwell in your space along the pounding

seafoam stem, the connector of my two favorite parts of his —

press my ear permanently to what moves between them,

adjacent to a mecca, every night falling asleep

to the echo of blood, neighbors with God