Your fingers plunge into my palm

swaying like gazelles in the forest of the mind

I dream of them         a sanctuary of warmth,

 or a river of peace that doesn’t follow

              the roses’ bashful path to the gardens of your chest

flowing like motherhood on hard-scorched               

             orphanage

Candles melting into body as prayer, or salvation.

I come into your arms possessed by trembling

The war is before me

             behind me

The war is within me

             and beside me

No street leads to a street

No prayer can make the journey heavenward

I gaze upon the wreckage from myself and turn back

I walk to my home

the road is long,

             the road is death

entering my house in search of small wars

I wipe memory’s dust off my desk

sweeping it from the balcony

                           keeper of my dreams

In the inferno of the blast, she reached out to embrace the moon,

unaware the moon had taken its own life

in the eyes of a bride on her wedding-day morning, 

                       taken by the war

                                     on the journey of forever.

From that moment I hated the verb ‘was’

                                        its masks and its siblings— 

that turn homes into graves

and bodies into stuff

and ordinary death into calamity 

while small hearts detonate weddings

            in the blood of girls

                           sleeping on the bombs of dreams.

On my return

I carried maps of blood

                                         distributed equally

                                         among the neighborhood’s households

I took my rations,

              lit a cigarette as good

              company for the desolate

              perplexity in my veins,

              and proceeded to survey my strides, step by step

              death by death

What if you were with me?

              Would I mark each death as one step or two?

or would I fasten you

              as a sonorous string to my soul

and make my escape from the breaking news.

My love,

                I miss everything that was before the war      that was not a dream:

                the breeze in the garden misses your breath

                the sky bends down

                to take back its clouds

                from your silken hips

sand burns, maddened

by the touch of your toes

dreams of your long gown stretching towards the springs of my desire. 

the church steps miss us traversing,

                our visions of a calm and peaceful sky 

I miss…

All that is in you and all that is in me

                                                                 I miss

a rendezvous after the rain

I peel you an orange,

feed your shyness my heart

all the nestlings hatch

                           where our fingers interlace

                           at the moment of my death, 

           the moment of You      divine

My love,

I miss you, my first rain

bright of my memory, 

my small wars

you are all the gardens of my life,

my peace and my warmth,

                                       misses you