For Fariba
When he said
they’re deaf, dumb
and blind; so they will not return,
God meant had we died
in her arms,
my mother would’ve carried on
spoon-feeding until certain
we were safely enshrined,
our halos on exhibit.
Nor did she turn to salt—
even now she looks back though unsure
of what exactly was looted the year the milk
of the rubber tree on the back porch dried up.
She couldn’t hear but they carried away
the grating rattle of her pots,
giggles that died
at dinner. Hunger
stayed and reached with our thin manacled mouths
for rationed wafers that perched
higher on the shelf where nothing
wished to be disturbed.
It wasn’t like an earthquake—
my mother couldn’t hear the night sky
rip into starry strips,
she felt the warheads rumble,
listened with her feet
she kept flat under the table.
With two gold bangles chiming
on each of our wrists and the double-strand
of jasmine wilting on our chests
my mother had meant to say
we were believers
though she’d never read the Qur’an
nor heard the azan.
The poem first appeared in the journal Southern Humanities Review and it is collected in When Your Sky Runs Into Mine published by Elixir Press (Feb 2023).
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