(for Ibrahim)
Even birds understand how magnificence
begins on the
tiny suture between two wings.
However they know nothing about
this fall. We
slid our our bodies down the dune,
the world crumpling into mud
beneath our
skins. How wildly holy we have been,
you and I, sightseeing past
this crucifix
delicate on my chest and the almond-
formedtasbih drooping from yours.
Now, vastness
shadows what stays on these
sidewalks every time we unlearned
the acquainted route
to high school, sang “baami” to tease
the ladies, or basined a stray sheep
by
a farmland devoured by brushfire.
At fourteen, I recall my father
gripping a boy
attempting to show him the origin
of names. AbrahamandIbrahim–
my father says,
can’t you seethere are too many
war-torn international locations between
each names?
So, I mistake your glint. I mistake
my pal for a gun, and he
affords to smuggle
me out of hurt. And that is the place
the autumn begins, you and I
tumbling from all
that peak, an vacancy forming
proper on the spot
the place two shoulders as soon as merged as one.