I do not belong to ether
or the spice garden living in my limb
I can belong nowhere, in the sea crust,
on the drifts of petals
thrown eastward, origami in
prayers ripening the darkness,
falling off the stone wall, notes, leaves
histories bitter under my tongue,
the herb that was brewed from
Mother to daughter, from a Nile
that pulled us through
between its legs, swallowed
our sorcery and stone,
spit us out on the sand,
to crawl and find home;
now the compass is a strange nectar
of all the summers I left myself
to find my bones, the milk
from the hilltops spilling
through cities and dreams,
the foreign smell of a thick honey
blurring the seed, like i can ripen
softly beneath a very old and smoking
Cedar tree— and this is the traveler’s
prayer, to touch dust
and leave no signature,
to sleep inside life, but the
tomb remains barren;
that we weren’t
ever here, that our memories
are fragile picture frames jutting
into stars, that I can move
through caves, curved like
the body we were carved into,
a vessel of olives,
as the rain oils the ground
we walk.
Lea