Epilogue As Preface
Suppose the nightmare happens
your library on fire pages burning commas ashed
suppose the shrapnel the haze
suppose it is the last day and there isn’t a shelf to lean on
what remains?
not the buildings and billboards
the spice jars the whisky that never spoils
not an olive or an orange not our mouths and names
not doom or this moment
only memory
barely an image colour of the sea a deepest blue
your voice which is mine and smiling
I almost hear it it is telling me to cross—
Desire
Mulberries explode in my fingers,
purple is the name of my God,
God is July in the mountains,
mountains are the colour of a lover’s eyes:
greyish brown in February, green in May.
May and a woman is crossing Hamra,
prosecco a clutch in her arms.
Another woman touching my hair
on the red couch. The red couch,
all the nights it supervises.
Nothing comes close to Beirut in October,
chairs in the sun, heat breaking like weeks,
slow and inevitable. On Gemmayze’s stairs
a man reads a terrible song,
says his hands are tied, tired of running:
it is the sting of August when he flees.
The months are impermanent like a gaze,
come December I fling my body into fairy lights
zigzagging a tree. Swallow the city like a seed.
This is how I repay my debts, how I plead guilty.
On Karantina’s rooftop, a man says listen,
can you touch this nightmare?
All year I chase midnight
through corners and into dawn.
Passengers
after the ceasefire, on the flight to Beirut
I’m not religious, no,
not even sure about spirituality,
but when the plane rises,
each time it lands,
I have this sense of indebtedness—
or is it gratitude?
I whisper the words
my mother whispered:
in the name of God.
Everything rests on this flight,
though the babies continue to wail.
Of course there’s fear.
We’re alive.
There’s much to lose.
Look at the sky, how endless,
and the breath carrying us through:
we’ve come from somewhere,
and we’re going somewhere too.
