Désenchanté

On the way to the lavender fields, the lady yells
LAVANDE and LAVANDRE
are two different things!
I ask for a cup of lemon 
sorbet, but I’m given LAVANDRE.

I say Citron, citron, to clarify. 
I buy a jar of floral honey.
The taste reminds me of those Costco roadshows:
Texas wildflower, California blueberry.

I’m standing outside stained glass windows and thinking of 
heat waves, how water
warbles and warps your body hair. 
Every cathedral I go to, I realize prayer
candles cost money, so I light
butts, the already-burnt ones.

My friend kicks out the stand and I do dhikr. 
We are told to move back, 
but contrarian as we are, stay put. 

The police arrive to escort away
some sort of escaped hospital patient. 
I say they should leave him because
Imagine you’re sick, and the 
first place you go is church.

I’m an incessant lip biter with the scars to prove it, 
and three crooked holes in my nose, which are
unintentionally, unluckily, uneven. 

I follow ritual: stand, bow, lay my forehead and nose
to the floor on my musalla to pray.