with lines from Warsan Shire and Kaveh Bassiri
We were shrill screams in the mangled dark, cut open
by sharp summer rain, bleeding more dark onto the street,
the moon a missing father. Gunshots in the distance, ruin
breathing down our necks, rage running barefoot between
the ancient houses, chasing us back across the black border
into our old guiltless country, fear a light we would never
switch off again. What we lost in the summer was lost
forever, devoured by the dogs of womanhood. Forgetting
is the hardest thing in the world, a poet said and yet
I still sit here, drowning in we, searching for the meaning
of innocence in the remains of memory. My memories
are forgetful; they don't remember me, another poet said
but mine remember me far too well, as a crow remembers
the face of the one who once fed it, no matter how long ago.
