How to See It by Moudi Sbeity

How to See It

What they don’t report on the news is the way,
after we’ve pooled on the couch from our daylong
forward press, my lover asks me to take off my socks.
And in his sweet way, in his gentle care, places palms
full of lotion around my callused heel, rubs his fingers
firm and deep along my arched sole, up through the
valleys between my toes, a secure five-in-five clasp
wriggling away the tension. He doesn’t mind that my
big toe has a fungus half the size of a quarter under
the nail bed, or that it’s been weeks since we’ve slid
into each other all naked and limbed and sweating.
Doesn’t even ask for a foot rub in return. Instead,
he kneads the miles ached around my tendons one
pressure release at a time. Wraps me in hopeful
maybes as we discuss migrating north to Canada,
or south to Argentina. Says maybe things aren’t
as bad as the headlines read, says without saying,
that maybe there are countless unsung others also
tending to this holy work of holding the world,
that maybe the world is full of nameless devotees
tracing their humble love along the sore contours
of a walked together life, so full of such kindness
to even consider how it is we might begin to see it.

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Moudi Sbeity is a first-generation Lebanese-American currently enrolled in the Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling masters program at Naropa University. Prior to attending Naropa, they co-owned and operated a Lebanese restaurant in Salt Lake City, which served as a queer safe space. Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah in 2014. As a person who stutters, they are passionate about writing and poetry as transpersonal practices in self-expression.

Moudi’s poems have appeared in the following anthologies; Irreplaceable by Nan Seymour and Terry Tempest Williams (Moon In The Rye Press, 2025), Love Is For All Of Us by James Crews (Storey Publishing, May 2025), The Nature Of Our Times by Luisa A. Igloria (Paloma Press, Fall 2025). Moudi’s first book, Habibi Means Beloved, a memoir on growing up queer and stuttering in Lebanon, is expected to be published in late 2026 by University of Utah Press.