Morocco: entering Maroc

if I don't write I just might die—the need is a matter of life or death and the interactions that follow will be brusk unless I get these words out on this lined paper on this cramped train car in the midst of a broad plain broken only by the occasional sheep herder and flock. out there in the immensity I sense an otherness not unlike the otherness of my own mind. I choose to contain it and choose to set it free; choose my moods either pleasant or distasteful.

right now
I choose to think broadly and get out of the crowded train car
and tend to my sheep

—Jamila, 28 October 2006