If nothing else, at least this clemency: two whorls
in each face, round pistils burrowed & searching.
Tariq asks what I saw in my sleep. I weave a sweet
lie about my mother’s pomegranates, the kitchen
tiles we bloodied digging for the seed in each
rumored to belong to a mirror tree in paradise.
The truth: a girl with melting eyes
who holds my gaze all night, vitreous rivers
gushing down our faces until one of us wakes.
There is no unseeing it. The whites thick
& clotted, erupting into weeds where they fall
by my feet. My people don’t share what darkness
we’ve seen—fear always a message from the devil.
Tariq says true dreams reveal themselves at the first
inhale of sunrise. How to hold wide my eyes
for the ineluctable light? On a disappeared horizon
a bush continues to burn, a lilied cervix swarms green,
& Jacob is still sightless, forty years lost to grief.
Clouds drone above me, my two ordinary
eyes sealed in sleep. Every vision is redolent & terrible.
Every temporal sight either a miracle or a mistake.
Leave a Reply