honestly it was okay to dislike
almost everything
even the graffiti on the wall
of the Standesaamt
as we walked, you holding
my hand, leading me
to the realization
that marrying is easy
for an American.
it's not as though I'm Syrian.
Germans, those I've met,
certainly you, like Americans
(which gives some cause
for concern)
& that graffiti, gangland
chic phony filtered
through a Euro trash
bin still a touch of home
remembered as I waffled through
the interview
my pidgin hoch-Deutsch on display.
we didn't want to pay
for a translator
250 Euros better spent
on rings
though the broad-gestured
bureaucrat almost insists.
these women
brassy with their chubby-
armed semaphore,
hatchet-scowled
until they flirt --
I chattered something
a remembered line
Goethe or Brecht
or boilerplate
from a standard contract
& she stamped my future
but left me with a murder-hole
I could slip into,
one last document
to be procured a long-
form birth certificate,
the short-form will not do
& I used the paper's edge to leap
back
across the ocean
wondering,
now,
as I check my pockets,
repeatedly,
what I forgot.
