Love Poem with Parenthetical
I
Shadow branches rise through our bedroom window
It’s garbage day Tuesday We hear squeaky wheels
a blue jay lifting from the sky the small sighs of waking
We’ve unplugged the clock and can’t hear it over the sounds of each other
Finally we are together with no obstacle
and enough time to forget about time to extend
into a new unworried day When we brush our teeth in the mirror
we find freckled portals the uncanny match of our skin
then take ourselves out to the curb where we smoke and talk
about all that’s been taken from us
II
(War made our homeland into a place you cannot return to for fear
of being made to kill all men machines now If you went back my love
Assad’s army would snatch you up healthy strong gunmetal
A different kind of war broke up my family strewn like ashes
of a stopped lineage We jump at red tail lights growing in the window
like fires I drop a dish and you still hear the bombs dropping closer
to your home than the night before We’ve taken stolen opportunity
from our parents didn’t recognize didn’t give We’re filled
with a language we don’t know how to speak and cannot teach
our children)
III
We find new places to tuck into here is our small apartment
with all the light the moths the lavender to push them away Here
is a love so large we can reach inside it and pull out branches of blooms
Here is the trash taken away and the loneliness of morning as it opens to day
when the walls don’t hold us and we leave do what we must
work another day just to bring home a bounty to each other
our tiny nested landscape to turn out the light and sleep again
dreaming of light and limbs
