Dust By Mona Kareem "We did not cross the border, the border crossed us." – from the chants of indigenous Americans My grandfather crossed the desert like it were the threshold of his house in his eyes, it did not seem yellow or infinite the way I see it he knew intimately each layer of its skin how it changed its shirts with the sky when it raged, and when it calmed to allow his arrival My grandfather did not die with men in the sun nor did he travel across an iron gate he crossed lines the state was yet to discover in his memory the borders remained dust even after they declared names and maps my grandfather did not go to school where they would pilfer his geography He never expected that one day he would have to keep still to look towards the opposite bank and find nothing he squints his eyes covers them with the tents of his palms perhaps he’d retrieve a fraction of an image My grandfather did not die in an epic revolution or a pointless, bloody battle between his clan’s cabals he left his sickle in the oil fields and spent the rest of his life preparing sweet tea for guardians of the iron gate He died in the ICU surrounded by a tribe of grandchildren white, and sterile no sky pulled on his color and no skin set in him 8