​It is the way the afternoon sits on the far
hedge with the maroon aura of a monk at prayer,
 
these are nameless hours, trapped in parentheses
of barren remembering, scraping sour probabilities off the
 
edges of clouds, the quiet that hovers over the thick
air sweating salt into the shape of my listless
 
wanting, steepled fingers running through the hair of
the wind the way thought seeks to curl a thread of time
 
into itself, long ago becomes a point on the far
wall when promises were whispered against naked
 
skin, but it was raining then, a deluge that swallowed earth
and sky, columns of monstrous wetness holding up
 
nothing, rising from nothing, a drop tracing the smooth
cheek of the window pane in a nihilistic line, pain too
 
is a  lump of purposeful nothingness in a cross legged
chant for release, its shadow at noon falling
 
at its feet, prostrate, the light a wall of grotesque truth
holding up nothing, rising from nothing.
 
It is the way the afternoon sits on the far hedge.

the blue clay jar I brought 
from the market in Marrakesh
slips through mother's wrinkled fingers
shattering on her polished red oxide floor,
she bends quietly, picking up the pieces,
one by one as
brown teak rafters sag low
to examine her bruised hands,
grandpa's empty armchair 
peers through his round glasses,
his long sleep shaken by the sound of 
earth on earth,
the frightened kitten flattens against
the cat-shaped shadow
on the whitewashed wall,
just as the flowers in her hair 
fall over her shoulder,
wild jasmine;
we sat there long ago, at that very spot,
she, telling me a story about gods 
and demons who churned the ocean 
for the nectar of eternal life,
me, running away, 
my cup of milk turning on its side,
a dusty, pink stream leading a breathless path
to the unresisting door,
now, years later,
I pace the old house searching for myself
in the guilty corners,
while the yellow sunlight from a far desert
freed from its terracotta cage
stretches in the cool shade of her 
orange hibiscus flowers. 

​take me in your hand, i bend towards you, phototropic
your yellow heat burns through my stomach
rises up out of my mouth until i breathe it out in dimples
 
it’s difficult to imagine someone else feeling like this
hot-mouthed warming, warming, warming
pinpricked through white sheets, being eaten alive,
 
how wonderful it is to feel weightless
to not exist, to not feel the red of body
but yours so light it melts on the tongue like sherbet