Your name is your secret

I performed the petal’s surgery with my

cold mouth. Gently the juice veins split.

Inside: a seed round with milk, a threaded butterfly wing,

a mask of marbled butter.

The mask I will provide you when necessary, which may be

tomorrow. Once the time is upon us,

do not ask the wrong questions. Fasten tightly, as

instructed by the flight attendant.

You know the secret: it is your name, your thick blood,

your liver’s net.

I must arrive unadorned, and you must be smoothly shrouded.

Crouch softly,

do not crunch leaves with glass slippers

Your feet will narrow one day, which also may

be tomorrow.

Written pages hold no importance. These

words of air, twisted in wind, are your inheritance.

The wooden chest at the foot of your bed has it all:

your secret, your name, these wind fire words.

On that same roof there can be more than one season–

Go and find it.

X posts from my country

(the one you send donations to)

I.

My thoughts: available only

as a letter I will write to you

It is the year 1403

and I am finally religious

II.

Inshallah swells the womb

enveloping me,

channeling you

I am:

the silk road’s backcountry breeze

III.

Our family lives in a city of vowels

my mother bundles us in her sleeves

we arrive to Mecca with our Hajj passport

Otherwise the doors remain firmly locked

IV.

My husband walks beside me

hushed heads bent together

We are soldiers constructed of

surrendered weapons

Our lockstep falls across

the trails of a white flag.