Tonight, I am all joint and animal dark. My heel blots out the moon,
vanishes the small nod of light. And yes,
I prayed today, verging into my bismillah before settling
on the broken.
I stoop into my longings, plot a seed in every crevice. Last week,
I titled another page with my body
and surrendered every bending, splitting line of myself
to the making.
When we refer to plants, we call this positive phototropism,
a body rivering toward the light.
I want to river toward the light. I want to lean my neck toward
a thing until I, too, become ism,
scientific and named into truth.
Today, I walked through a dream that wasn’t mine, and I
thought of you waiting at the end of it,
as if to gather me,
and maybe that’s just the kind of woman I am—no matter
how many times I halve the moon, or find myself in a room
without a window, I know Allah
sees everything, every hand planting something new,
every metaphor for the tree it becomes. And, yes,
I prayed today, but planting my palms together has never
felt like blossoming up the side of a mountain.
The only time these hands have ever flowered,
have ever been used for something good,
was that spring at Yamnuska, where we found a clear,
blue door of glacial water, and I walked right through
your reflection.