Memories on Your Birthday


    Artefacts of your life: Duke, Moscow, the A. T,


    the Naval Academy, what came before Rick,


    Russian, Arabic; the longing for what you spoke,


    saw, and never shared. The short-fibered feeling


    of your prayer rug under my quietly questing fingers,


    sliding, pausing, stopping, looking up, moon-faced, at


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    you. How religion and the sanctity of a soul are traded


    for a moment’s relief; how turkey bacon can make a family


    weep, smoke wandering up to touch too-high ceilings; how


    twenty-seven and thirty-two are numbers confused & discarded


    in the miasma of my memory—of him—of you. Motherhood


    is lost on me the same way half-learned prayers in languages


    foreign slip the mind like fingers of water on waxed windows,


    the same way I conflate the images of three houses and thirteen years,


    no different from the conflicting stories your daughters and I tell—


    It’s the same feeling as when you left for Cairo like a sparrow in the night


    and returned with a ring on your finger and the devil in your suitcase.