the blueshift journal

& in the light the facts go damp around their borders

 

          it was my fault  

i said [leave] & meant [help] but i said [leave]

& when you left i slept a full necklace of days

woke convinced the blood had gone solid in my legs

 

 

        you’d quote darwish like i now know all

men without countries do but in those days i

thought my particular wounds monogamous &

only mine      fell in love with our corresponding

aches

 

 

       both of us just muslim enough that in the

mornings when you woke to find me     sobbing

into the velvet of the prayer      you kept quiet & took

it for the usual set of guilts

 

 

                                              smoke

drifting through our loosened hair        sunlight quieting

to listen with us       to the crackling albalabil song

that made me cry with you & doesn’t       anymore