today you took your body & tried to rip it in two in search
of poetry, the kind stolen straight from our ancestors’ mouths.
You found nothing except memory & sinew, forced yourself
to stitch everything back up. Next tell me a story about revolution.
Tell me you’ve lost something you loved, like a jade ring,
a shadow puppet you told bedtime stories to. Your father dragged
your ancestral mirror across the Atlantic from Iran—sometimes
you look in its dusty depths & see a grandmother you’ve never met.
She’s getting married again & again, lighting a candle & blowing
it out slowly. That flame never wants to die. But in the blank space
between you & me something’s missing. It feels like an open wound.
God gave us as much as he could: honeysuckle between your lips,
pistachios labeled in Farsi you are unable to read. Sometimes,
after fresh rainfall, you see a woman dancing in the reflection of
a puddle. You go home & call a telephone number you’ve dialed
a thousand times before, but know it’s out of service. One day,
as you slowly stitch yourself back together, yanking the thread
through the thick flesh of memory, someone will answer that phone
& say this is merely how we started before hanging up.