Riwa Saab
it so happens i’ve failed as a daughter. i don’t call
enough. i left, and i don’t plan on coming back soon.
they said i can only meet god in my homeland. such a shame,
all the people that will never meet god, because
they’ve never been to my homeland. because of the stress
i’ve begun grinding my teeth. my friends say i need
a night guard, and i picture it so clearly: a cloaked
shadow mounted on his tall horse, so tall that its neck
aches to look down at us – maybe like god – perched
outside my bedroom as i sleep. the chiming of silence
wakes me, and i leap onto the horse, we gallop onto the hills,
just me and him, the dark of night. nothing sexy happens. we only
watch the sky quiet, as a thousand shooting stars float overhead
and all the military bases below them diffuse. suddenly
we have rivers. the marshes in iraq drink again, the earth
was never thirsty, never drained, our cities never on fire.
and from the 6×4 photograph of my far, unnamed cousin,
we peel him out. we pull all the martyrs out of the photographs
in all their dimensions, away from the fate of the cardboard box,
the corner of the closet, the things they salvaged when the men’s
grins dribbled with gunpowder, spilling onto the floors of
our stolen houses. no, a nightguard is only a bit of plastic —
our landscapes ground down with collapsed buildings,
and all i’ve sacrificed are my teeth
Riwa Saab is a poet, theatre-maker and sound artist..
andotherpoems.com 